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Zusatztext Entertainment Weekly Perfectly formed characters...their couplings and uncouplings make for a fun French farce. Informationen zum Autor Megan McAndrew is herself the daughter of expatriates. She grew up in France, Spain and Belgium before attending college in the United States. She worked in Warsaw, Poland, as a representative for the Financial Services Volunteer Corps. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her teenage son. Klappentext Set on a French island in the Mediterranean, this edgy and humorous debut novel recounts the eventful reunion of two sets of sisters--one American, the other English--who grew up together as stepsisters. CHAPTER ONE We're here on vacation, though leisure was the last thing on the minds of the Genoese warlords who settled Santerre, hewing their towns and villages out of the mountainside into the flinty strongholds that I point out to Jim as we hurtle along the coastal road that hugs the cap. I've made the trip from the airport so often that I've come to enjoy the hairpin turns, the vertiginous drops into the winking sea, the sharp intake of breath as an insane native comes careening around the bend in a beat-up Peugeot, honking too late in warning. The same can't be said for Jim, who stares fixedly ahead, missing all the scenery. By the time we reach the town of Orzo, he has grown unnaturally quiet, his unease betrayed by the overly casual tone in which he asks, "Why are all the road signs painted over?" "Nationalists," I cheerfully reply. "Pardon me?" I swerve to avoid the mournful cow that appears in the middle of the road after the next turn. "They drive around at night with paintbrushes." "I don't get it." Sometimes I forget that what passes for local color on Santerre would be viewed by most people as criminal behavior, just as I don't notice anymore the lurid slashes that deface the island's road signs. "Resistance to French cultural imperialism. They blow stuff up too." "Yeah, right," Jim says wanly. "Honest," I say, motioning to the charred hulk that once housed the administration of Orzo's defunct asbestos mine, though no one knows for sure how the building reached its present state. Jim, however, is by now entirely focused on not throwing up. Watching him stagger out of the rental car, I can't help but feel a little guilty. Poor Jim: I doubt this was what he had in mind when I proposed a French holiday. At first sight, the village of Borgolano presents none of the standard Mediterranean charms, especially at dusk, when it takes on a frankly lugubrious aspect, with its tall shuttered houses deep in gloom. Like all Santerran villages, it is carved out of the rock that surrounds it, its four levels connected by a maze of alleys and steep stone stairs patrolled by feral cats, a mangy specimen of which slinks by as we unload our bags. "Where's the beach?" Jim asks, having regained his equilibrium, and I point down, far, far below, to the rocky inlet where sea urchins and jellyfish lie in wait. Our wheeled cases bumping behind us, we set off down the path, past the Benoîts' and the Paolis', the Perettis' gated compound, and the old Albertoni place, its crumbling stucco baring the stacked stone slabs beneath, until we reach the last bend before the cliff. And there, in the gloaming, awash in purple shadows, rises my family's summer house, the great black oak door flung open to reveal Odette waving in the embrasure. "Alors, did you have a nice trip?" Odette used to be a stewardess, and she has retained from those days a brisk social efficiency that I've always found disconcerting but seems to put men at ease. It works on Jim; having ushered us in and installed him in the comfortable chair, she sets about plying him with apéritifs and solicitous chatter, all the while dutifully showcasing me with questions about my exciti...
