Sophia Willoughby, a young English woman from an aristocratic family and a perso
n of strong opinions and even stronger will, has packed off her unsatisfactory a
nd improvident husband to Paris. He can have his tawdry mistress. She will devot
e herself to the serious business of properly raising her two children.
Then
tragedy strikes: the children die, and Sophia, in despair, finds her way to Pari
s, arriving just in time for the revolution of 1848. Before long Sophia has form
ed the unlikeliest of close relations with Minna, her husband's sometime mistres
s. Minna leads Sophia on a wild adventure through Bohemian and revolutionary Par
is.
Sylvia Townsend Warner, was one of the most original and inventive of 20t
h-century English novelists as well as a frequent contributor to the New Yorker.
Summer Will Show is the most out-and-out exciting of Warner's novels and a bril
liant re-imagining of the possibilities of historical fiction.
