Jigsaw

 I'm not sure why Sybille Bedford's Jigsaw caught my eye when it appeared on Brotherhood Books, though the subtitle, An Unsentimental Education: A Biographical Novel, definitely piqued my interest. An author's (fictionalised?) memoir of her youth in the South of France in the 1920s? Right up my alley. I noted it down on my wish list.

And then, a day later, I was browsing real life books in our local op shop, and there was this same bright blue cover peering up at me, and only $2! It was obviously meant to be, and I brought Sybille Bedford home with me.

Well -- wow. I enjoyed this book as much as anything I've read for ages. What a story! Young 'Billi,' shunted across Europe between her stiff, sad German father and her beautiful, feckless, vivacious, mother, winds up in a small seaside French town with her mother and her mother's much younger, besotted husband Alessandro. They befriend the local characters and exotic visitors and enjoy various delightful and comic misadventures, until the last third of the book takes a darkly gripping turn, and I could barely put it down from then on till the final page.

This is so much my kind of book, I couldn't believe that I've never come across Sybille Bedford before. I immediately ordered two of her books online and if any more of them wink at me from a box in the op shop, I will dive on them with joy.