Simone in Pieces
A WWII refugee’s search to recover—and reconnect with—her past.
Readers first meet Simone Lerrante, a Belgian war orphan, as a child refugee in Sussex, England, her memory damaged by trauma. The novel offers a kaleidoscopic vision of Simone’s fractured life and piecemeal understanding of self across multiple points of view. Following her from Cambridge to New York City and across the United States—through a disastrous marriage, thwarted desire, and the purgatory of academic backwaters—the novel charts Simone’s unexpected reconnection with her past, which provides both autonomy and inspiration for her future.
Brilliant in conception and dazzlingly adept in its technical execution, Simone in
Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
Pieces proves once again that Burroway is a national treasure. She is at the height of her prodigious powers, exploring the great and enduring theme of literary art: the yearning for a self, for an identity, for a place in the universe. This is a must read.
If there were such a thing as a cubist novel, Simone in Pieces would define the genre. Every chapter captures the woman at its center from a different angle, each a dazzling surprise. Burroway has found a brilliant way to portray a woman in search of herself and her dire history, lost and found many times over.
Rosellen Brown, author of The Lake on Fire