Set against the seductive world of 1960s Rio de Janeiro, an exquisite debut novel about family secrets, divided loyalties, and what we're willing to do to save ourselves.
This mesmerizing first novel follows a glamorous family as they prepare to leave the seeming paradise of Brazil for Canada in the wake to the mysterious disappearance -- and presumed drowning -- of their eldest daughter a year earlier. As the novel moves back and forth between the members of the Maurer family, we are taken into the heart of a family whose beauty and charm belie a more troubling reality.
We meet the family's brilliant and charismatic father, whose bipolar extremes are becoming increasingly disturbing; his long-suffering wife, who once had a brief affair that proves to have shattering consequences for the family she swore to protect; their two remaining daughters, both on the brink of understanding the darker currents that run in their once-proud family; and the lost daughter herself, a beautiful young woman undone by her own grand delusions.
Taking readers from the golden beaches of Rio to the poverty of its fishing villages, from the glamour of the legendary Copacabana Club to the austerity of a remote convent, this revelatory novel takes us into the soul of a family already living in the shadow of loss and now poised to leave behind everything they've ever known, if only they could make peace with the past.
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“At its core, All Is Beauty Now is a meditation written from the heart. Faber’s debut novel is emotionally rich as it explores the ways in which wealth, familial bonds, and mental illness affect a single family living in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. The story is exquisitely slow as it explores these threads. It’s graceful and haunting. Seasoned romance readers should know that it does end happily, but not the way genre romance typically does. All Is Beauty Now is a novel that will speak to readers of general and literary fiction who want a sumptuous exploration of privilege and grief.”
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RT Book Reviews (4½ stars, Top Pick!)