Word: rivieras
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...faithful coterie. In 1958 he purchased a medieval chateau near Aix-en-Provence called Vauvenargues. "I've bought Cézanne's view!" he said. He spent most of his final years, however, at Notre-Dame-de-Vie, a hilltop villa at Mougins on the Riviera, named after a chapel that once stood on the site. He worked until dawn on the last day of his life, April...
...sunny morning in 1918, a weak, feverish Katherine Mansfield arose in a shabby hotel on the French Riviera and, for the first time, coughed up blood. "I don't want to find this is real consumption," she wrote in her journal. "I shan't have my work written. That's what matters. How unbearable it would be to die -leave 'scraps,' 'bits' ... nothing real finished...
...CURTAIN RISES and reveals an opulent set: the pool behind a sprawling Riviera mansion. The characters include the host, a Grand Old Man of English Letters, and his guest, the fashionable, wealthy, titled, or ornamental, who gossip and munch on scones. As the drama begins, it reveals a game of ambitious, but subtle, manipulation which some characters play at a leisurely pace, others with greater determination. Curiously, as the intrigue unfolds, the audience begins to recognize itself on stage. In horror, or delight, spectators watch the dissection of the characters' worst sides--their own. The Grand...
...most entertaining sections of the book, Morgan explores Maugham's life at Mauresque, his Riviera home--invitiations to which were highly sought after among the British and French as well as American jet-set. Maugham received hundreds of visitors there during his life, mostly men, later using many of them as material for his books and plays. Here, Morgan's style becomes lighter and slightly disjointed as he skips from one anecdote to another. Visitors included Noel Coward, Jean Cocteau, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Gladys Stern, whom Morgan describes as "bursting fat." Morgan looks back to Maugham...
...record show that the book does not provide the neatest of plots. But its tangled cast is instantly credible and permanently delightful. From the opening wisecrack, Kennedy and his world seem so real that when, at novel's end, the lawyer finally relaxes on the "Irish Riviera," readers may feel a slight sense of resentment. The fault is Higgins' for providing so much merriment in so brief a space. His readers should demand the same treatment as Kennedy's crooked clients: after all, one good term deserves another...