Palace of the Drowned
A Novel
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3.2 • 24 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of Tangerine, a "taut and mesmerizing follow up...voluptuously atmospheric and surefooted at every turn” (Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and When the Stars Go Dark).
It’s 1966 and Frankie Croy retreats to her friend’s vacant palazzo in Venice. Years have passed since the initial success of Frankie’s debut novel and she has spent her career trying to live up to the expectations. Now, after a particularly scathing review of her most recent work, alongside a very public breakdown, she needs to recharge and get re-inspired.
Then Gilly appears. A precocious young admirer eager to make friends, Gilly seems determined to insinuate herself into Frankie’s solitary life. But there’s something about the young woman that gives Frankie pause. How much of what Gilly tells her is the truth? As a series of lies and revelations emerge, the lives of these two women will be tragically altered as the catastrophic 1966 flooding of Venice ravages the city.
Suspenseful and transporting, Christine Mangan's Palace of the Drowned brings the mystery of Venice to life while delivering a twisted tale of ambition and human nature.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mangan follows her well-received debut, 2018's Tangerine, with an elegantly elegiac thriller. On the heels of a headline-grabbing drunken meltdown at a London publishing gala, British novelist Frankie Croy accepts best friend Jack's offer to lay low in Jack's family's vacant palazzo in Venice. But unmoored in the exotic surroundings as she waits for Jack to join her, the emotionally vulnerable loner, who has never managed to match her star-making first novel two decades earlier, worries whether at 42 she's suffering a mid-life crisis or some deeper sort of breakdown—which makes encountering a vivacious young admirer who claims to have met her previously, Gilly Larson, a not entirely unwelcome distraction. However, the more Frankie sees of this persistent new acquaintance, who eventually admits to being an aspiring writer herself, the greater her conviction that Gilly has been lying to her. Unraveling answers will lead the increasingly unsettled Frankie into deep waters and some treacherous situations. Though not all the Highsmithian deceptions come off as equally convincing, Mangan, unlike Frankie, more than lives up to the promise of her debut.
Customer Reviews
Not for me
The overall plot had some interesting elements, but I found the characters maudlin and one-dimensional. The intensity of Frankie and Jack’s friendship seemed pathological to me. (and why do they both have to have “man names?”) The best part was the claustrophobic, moody, decaying atmosphere of Venice in the off-season.
Awful
A third of the way through this book, I thought to myself, “Could this story rank up there with the other great stories about a writers in Venice like Mann’s Death in Venice or James’s ‘The Aspern Papers’?” And then the novel turns into the worst sort of sensationalistic schlock. Very disappointing.