~ Book Blitz ~
Opera by Mari.Reiza
Literary / Romance
About the Book:
A wealthy arts patron receives a wrongly delivered letter at her secret address in Kensington. Her therapist recognises the intended recipient immediately, leading her into the hands of a defeated composer she will, together with her sweetest accomplice, help back into music. A passionate rendition of human resilience.
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Read an Extract
Ivanka thinks back to her encounter with Maria.
Their hands never touched yet it was voltaic, both clamped
in the dismal darkness of his hall. The accident of it. The fear, the dirt...
With Alexey, their first meeting had been so different. He
had let her buy him dinner, at her insistence, even if he could have bought the
whole restaurant for her; she had been wearing a new
lipstick and had been a tad nervous. Months later, after
having tried to purge her last vestiges of Russian-ness by throwing the most
American of weddings, he used to tell every suitor, ‘You
think you can buy my wife for a song? You can’t buy one of
her earrings for five grand!’ So Russian. Had his money changed her, made her
more valuable? Yet theirs was a story of misuse of wealth, of human limitation.
He discouraged her from certain things from the start: some little, some big.
He discouraged her from having pets – ‘or kids, for that matter,’ he had
famously added.
People with no skills, no training, no diploma and no
dollars could make new lives, and they themselves who had it all, Alexey and
Ivanka, hadn’t. Breasts empty of milk, arms empty of a child, no toddlers hand
in hand skipping up to the door with their pink backpacks and blonde ponytails,
or licking their lips after savouring the sweetest of Russian pies like
Ivanka’s grandmother had once cooked her. Alexey had convinced Ivanka she
didn’t want to be popping babies out and choosing suitable home furnishings for
the rest of her life, that he could grant her so much more. And he had. He had
convinced her that he himself was bad for family, that he would have produced a
large progeny, all united, against him. And she had accepted his plea. Yet over
Château d’Yquem syrup and mould one night years later, in the company of
celebs, millionaires and puffed-up wives, all she could rejoice in was the sight
through the restaurant window of a baby wrapped in a pram in front of her,
alongside his mother, waiting for the bus. And then the bus came and they were
gone.
Love as theory marred by practice. Where did she go wrong
and can it be put right before the end?
Ivanka thinks back to Maria. What’s his story? Everyone has
something in them they cannot yet see. She wants to bring it out in him, but
not the way Alexey did in her...
‘Perhaps, I could finance him.’ Ivanka says it to the air,
in a ‘your call will be answered in the order it’s received’ tone.
Fer laughs. Manly laugh. She’s guilty, of lust, he knows and
he’s happy.
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About the Author:
Mari.Reiza was born in Madrid in 1973. She has worked as an investment research writer and management consultant for twenty years in London. She studied at Oxford University and lives off Portobello Road with her husband and child.
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