French Girl with Mother is a provocative, propulsive thriller that marries the spirit of James Salter with a hint of Patricia Highsmith and the velocity of The Art Forger.
Nathan is a young artist traveling across Europe in search of the emotional fire that has been missing from his work. He’s been deemed by his mentors and critics to be technically skillful but uninspired—criticisms he fears to be true. On a Paris street, he witnesses the volatile breakup of a young French woman and her beau. Nathan pursues a meeting with the woman, and it very quickly becomes evident that her provocative charisma and scathing beauty just may conjure the electricity he has been seeking for his work. So when the woman invites him to her parents’ crumbling, centuries-old chateau in the country to allow him to sketch her, he accepts, knowing that this proposition is both ill advised and thrilling.
Once enveloped by this isolated estate, a door opens to a world for which Nathan is not prepared—a world heralded by the arrival of the young woman’s family: her mother, a volatile, voracious former ballerina; her father, a mysterious businessman with secrets of his own; and her uncle, who might be trafficking in art forgeries.
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“A young American artist gets tangled in the erotic web of a Frenchwoman and her family…Ollestad builds a delicate tension between the characters, exposing their raw desire and exploring the concept of artistic inspiration…The seeds of discord are expertly sown…A quietly tense and absorbing read when the emphasis is on the ‘erotic’ rather than the ‘thriller.’”
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Kirkus Reviews