Foreign Bodies

The collapse of her brief marriage has stalled Bea Nightingale´s life, leaving her middle-aged and alone, teaching in an impoverished borough of 1950s New York. A plea from her estranged brother gives Bea the excuse to escape, by leaving for Paris to retrieve a nephew she barely knows; but the siren call of Europe threatens to deafen Bea to the dangers of entangling herself in the lives of her brother´s family. By one of America´s great living writers, Foreign Bodies is a truly virtuosic novel. The story of Bea´s travails on the continent is a fierce and heartbreaking insight into the curious nature of love: how it can be commanded and abused; earned and cherished; or even lost altogether.