Skip to content
Responsive image
Vendor
Fletcher Agency
Melissa Chinchillo
Original language
English
Categories
Weblink
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.c …

BECOMING BELLE

Nuala O'Connor

Based on the true story of Victorian London's premier dancer, a witty and inherently feminist novel about passion and marriage, and an unstoppable woman ahead of her time.
In 1887, Isabel Bilton is the eldest daughter of a middle-class military family in a small garrison town. By 1891 she is the Countess of Clancarty, dubbed "the peasant countess" by the press, and a member of the Irish aristocracy. Becoming Belle is the story of the four years in between, of her rapid ascent and the people that tried to tear her down.

With only her talent, charm, and determination, Isabel moves to London alone at age nineteen, changes her name to Belle and takes the city by storm. A true bohemian and the star of a double act she performs with her sister, she soon falls passionately in love with William, Viscount Dunlo, a young aristocrat. For Belle, her marriage to William is a dream come true, but his ruthless father makes clear he'll stop at nothing to keep her in her place.
Available products
Book

Published 2018-07-01 by Putnam

Comments

Nuala O'Connor has the thrilling ability to step back nimbly and enter the deep dance of time?this is a hidden history laid luminously before us of an exultant Anglo-Irish woman navigating the dark shoals and the bright fields of a life.

O'Connor has a genius for finding the universal and unifying life essence of seemingly diverse women as they nurture their deepest sensibilities and draw upon their enduring strength. ... O'Connor's rendering of a now little-known nineteenth-century music hall dancer in Becoming Belle is thrillingly dramatic and achingly moving and profoundly resonant into this present era.

Becoming Belle is a glorious novel in which Belle Bilton and 19th century London are brought roaring to life with exquisite period detail. In her portrayal of Belle, Nuala O'Connor delivers a seductive study of a complex and fascinating woman, who deserves the stage provided for her in this wonderful book.

A thoroughly engrossing and entertaining read. O'Connor's meticulous attention to period detail and scrutiny of the upper classes and their shallow lives [is] reminiscent of Edith Wharton at her very best. It also makes us question whether women have ever really escaped from the censorious judgement of Victorian times.

Nuala O'Connor is a gifted writer who, with incandescent characters and mellifluous prose, captivates the reader with the same command as magnificent theatre. Becoming Belle is so mesmerizing you will be distraught when it ends and you remember that she lives no more. O'Connor has resurrected a fiery, inexorable woman who rewrites the script on a stage supposedly ruled by men. Sensual, witty, daring, and unapologetically forward, Belle Bilton and her cohorts will dance on in your mind long after the curtains fall.