Contrapposto: A big, ravishing novel about a love that lasts a lifetime
- Letitia Davy
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Our fabulous Head of International Agencies, Letitia Davy, shares with us what she loves about the latest Dave Eggers novel, Contrapposto.
Cast your mind back to primary school and you might remember that being befriended by a girl one year older than you is perhaps the peak of human existence.
This is how Contrapposto, the brilliant new novel by Dave Eggers, begins.
Cricket Dib is a quiet and likeable boy with an immense talent for drawing. Olympia Argyros is a brilliant, worldly girl with a razor-sharp wit and a thirst for adventure. This unlikely pair become friends and so begins a platonic and romantic love story that quite literally lasts a lifetime.
Contrapposto is a big, wild, delicious novel that swept me up and kept me reading through the night. There is so much to love about this book.
Cricket and Olympia are flawed, surprising and loveable, even at their worst. They may weave in and out of each other’s lives, but their love for each other remains steadfast, thrilling and beautiful.
The story takes you across the globe and into the highs and lows of the art world. I learnt so much about drawing and studios and the machinations of galleries! (There are beautiful sketches peppered throughout the book.) But most of all, this novel rings true to how life can chew you up, spit you out and point you in a new and unexpected direction.
I did have a little cry at the end and was reminded of how it felt to read Heart the Lover – and funnily enough, Lily King is a fan of this book too.
If you haven’t read Dave Eggers before, then you’re in a for a real treat. And if you have, then you know he never writes the same book twice. He is a true and gifted storyteller.
I can’t wait for readers to get lost in these pages. This is a novel you will read and then gift to someone you love.
Contrapposto by Dave Eggers is out now, wherever you buy books.
Contrapposto
by Dave Eggers
Twenty years in the making, a big-hearted novel about art, life and the complicated beauty of both.
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