At the height of her career, concert pianist Elsa M. Anderson - former child prodigy, now in her thirties - walks off the stage in Vienna, mid-performance.
Now she is in Athens, watching as another young woman, a stranger but uncannily familiar - almost her double - purchases a pair of mechanical dancing horses at a flea market. Elsa wants the horses too, but there are no more for sale. She drifts to the ferry port, on the run from her talent and her history.
So begins a journey across Europe, shadowed by the elusive woman who bought the dancing horses.
A dazzling portrait of melancholy and metamorphosis, August Blue uncovers the ways in which we seek to lose an old story, find ourselves in others and create ourselves anew.
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I first saw her in a flea market in Athens buying two mechanical dancing horses.- 1: GREECE, SEPTEMBER
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(@PenguinUKBooks, 4 May 2023, e-book, 246 pages, ARC from the publisher via @NetGalley)
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I really enjoyed August Blue. I'm a fan of the author's fiction and non-fiction and was looking forwarding to reading this latest offering. This is quite a surreal book at times and I found Elsa's obsession with her strange doppelganger fascinating. It's never clear if this mystery woman is real or not. At times I wondered if Elsa imagined her which made the book all the more interesting. I really liked Elsa as a character and enjoyed learning about her past. I also liked the fact the stories travels different continents. You could say this is one of those books where nothing much happens but what does happen is engrossing.
