Digital List Price: | $25.99 |
Kindle Price: | $9.11 Save $16.88 (65%) |
Sold by: | Amazon.com Services LLC |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Audible sample Sample
Lea: A Novel Kindle Edition
Pascal Mercier’s international bestseller Night Train to Lisbon mesmerized readers around the world, and was adapted into a film starring Jeremy Irons. Now, in Lea, Mercier returns with a mysterious tale of a father’s love and a daughter’s ambition in the wake of devastating tragedy.
It starts with the death of Martijn van Vliet’s wife. Grief-stricken, his young daughter Lea retreats into the darkness of mourning. Then she hears the unfamiliar sound of a violin being played in the hall of a train station, and she is brought back to life—vowing to learn the instrument. Martijn, witnessing this delicate spark, promises to do everything in his power to keep her happy. But as Lea blossoms into a musical prodigy, her relationship with her father starts to disintegrate. Desperate to hold on to her, Martijn is pushed to commit an act that threatens to destroy them both.
A revelatory portrait of artistic genius and madness, Lea delves into the damaging power of jealousy as well as the poignant ways we strive to understand our families and ourselves.
A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Selection
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherGrove Press
- Publication dateSeptember 12, 2017
- File size3930 KB
Customers who bought this item also bought
Editorial Reviews
Review
A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Selection
“[A] tale of grief, fraud, guilt and madness . . . Revelatory.”―New York Times Book Review
“[Mercier] brings to life the worlds of people who possess a single-minded focus on the perfection of an idea, a phrase, a game or a note . . . Like his previous novel, Night Train to Lisbon, Lea is full of searing images.”―NPR
“A psychologically astute portrait of a damaged family . . . For fans of Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes.”―Booklist
“An intense character study that poses significant questions regarding affection and fixation, and the cost each exacts.”―Washington Independent Review of Books
“A passionate tale of finding comfort in the wake of tragedy.”―World Literature Today
“A novella about an artist’s development . . . genius and madness, love and betrayal, fury and self-destruction, all carefully arranged to make a stunning portrait.”―Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“Perfectly constructed, exciting, entertaining, enigmatic, memorable.”―Buchkultur
“Although the characters’ feelings become ever more complex and their actions less and less logical, the story itself never feels over-complicated or illogical, let alone sentimental. The frightening depths of the characters’ emotions are crossed by a kind of suspension bridge built by the author.”―Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Praise for Night Train to Lisbon:
“Rich, dense, star-spangled . . . The novels of Robert Stone come to mind, and Elias Canetti’s Auto-da-Fe, and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, and Kobo Abe’s The Ruined Map, not to mention Marcus Aurelius and Wittgenstein . . . [but] what Night Train to Lisbon really suggests is Roads to Freedom, Jean-Paul Sartre’s breathless trilogy about identity-making.” ―Harper’s magazine
“Celebrates the beauty and allure of language . . . adroitly addresses concepts of sacrifice, secrets, memory, loneliness, infatuation, tyranny, and translation. It highlights how little we know about others.” ―Chicago Sun-Times
“The text of Amadeu’s writing is filled not with mere nuggets of wisdom but with a mother lode of insight, introspection, and an honest, self-conscious person’s illuminations of all the dark corners of his own soul.” ―Seattle Times
“Dreamlike . . . A meditative, deliberate exploration of loneliness, language and the human condition . . . rewards readers with the generous gift of beautiful writing and some unforgettable images.” ―San Diego Union-Tribune
“A smart, heartfelt, thoroughly enjoyable book written for thinking adults, and the most recent incarnation, from Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf right down to Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind, of that potent, ever-popular myth―the book that changes your life.” ―Shelf Awareness
“A compelling blend of suspenseful narrative and discursive commentary . . . an intriguing fiction.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“A meditative novel that builds an uncanny power through a labyrinth of memories and philosophical concepts that illuminate the narrative from within . . . a remarkable immediacy that makes for a rare reading pleasure.” ―San Francisco Chronicle
Praise for Perlmann’s Silence:
“Absorbing . . . [Mercier] understands the soft sniping that sustains academic rivalries and draws wry comedy from them.” ―New Yorker
“An engrossing deep study of one man’s mind. Superb.” ―Evening Standard
“What might have been, in less talented hands, an amusing literary thriller is, in Mercier’s prose, superbly translated by Shaun Whiteside, something far more complex . . . Mercier’s previous novel to be published here, the deservedly popular Night Train to Lisbon, showed great intelligence and story-telling power; Perlmann’s Silence is a bolder attempt, and reaches greater depths.” ―Alberto Manguel, The Guardian (UK)
“Mercier has a flair for vivid characterization, and has created a personality-rich tapestry of human interaction . . . A hearty feast for the thinking reader . . . an utterly satisfying emotional rollercoaster.” ―Nick DiMartino, Shelf Awareness
“For readers of a philosophical bent, appreciative of slowly unfolding, elegant tales, this will be a pleasure.” ―Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B074N9174D
- Publisher : Grove Press; Translation edition (September 12, 2017)
- Publication date : September 12, 2017
- Language : English
- File size : 3930 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 236 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #737,282 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #276 in German Literature (Books)
- #1,259 in Psychological Literary Fiction
- #3,986 in Psychological Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
The story is implausible. The two men who share three days of of their life stories only just met and yet almost immediately fall into an intimacy of friendship that would normally take years to develop, both in matters of trust and also tolerance. I can't imagine being sucked into someone else's disturbing emotional personal drama almost instantly and then giving up three days of my life to accompany them, both on a physical journey and a deeply troubling emotional one. I mean really...who would do this?
The father of the young woman at the center of this story as she spirals into obsessive madness seems to have zero life of his own so gives himself over to his own obsession with the minutia of his young daughter's life which both enables and exacerbates her mental illness and leads him to become someone who acts towards her more like a jealous lover than a father. Very disturbing I thought.
As one other reviewer mentioned, the lack of interpretation of the French phrases was maddening. Not all of us speak or read French. I spent the first third of the book with a French-English dictionary at my side but then just gave it up as too much work for a book I wasn't enjoying anyway at that point.
I have immense respect for Pascal Mercier based solely on Night Train to Lisbon. I will never again transfer my appreciation for an author's work based solely on one book. Had I read this book first I probably would never have had the pleasure of reading Night Train. I wouldn't have bothered.
Top reviews from other countries
Zur Geschichte:ein Vater,der nach dem Tod seiner Frau, mit seiner zerbrechlichen Tochter zusammenlebt.Er fühlt sich verantwortlich für das Seelenleben der Tochter.Beide leben zurückgezogen,es ist schwer für ihn nach dem Tod seiner Frau,mit der verschlossenen Welt Leas in Kontakt zu treten.Durch ein Viollnenkonzert im Bahnhof wird Lea verzaubert.Der verlorengegangene Lebenswille kehrt zurück.Sie nimmt Geigenunterricht,wird zu einer herausragenden Violinensolistin,verliert sich aber mehr und mehr im Geigenspiel und der Verbindung zu ihrem Vater.Der leidet die Hölle und möchte wieder Zugang zu dem Gefühlsleben der Tochter haben.Das Drama beginnt und die Spannung steigt bis zum Schluß und man kann das Buch nicht mehr weglegen!