Lea: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
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
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
Pascal Mercier. (2017). Lea: A Novel. Grove Atlantic.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Pascal Mercier. 2017. Lea: A Novel. Grove Atlantic.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Pascal Mercier, Lea: A Novel. Grove Atlantic, 2017.
MLA Citation (style guide)Pascal Mercier. Lea: A Novel. Grove Atlantic, 2017.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 1 |
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2363-1/{705E6DFE-9813-490A-96C2-AB30E957C6C0}IMG100.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2363-1/{705E6DFE-9813-490A-96C2-AB30E957C6C0}IMG200.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2363-1/{705E6DFE-9813-490A-96C2-AB30E957C6C0}IMG150.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2363-1/{705E6DFE-9813-490A-96C2-AB30E957C6C0}IMG400.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780802189301
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B074N9174D
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780802189301
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780802121660
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Pascal Mercier
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- Lea
- dateAdded
- 2018-01-12T02:54:00Z
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com?websiteID=141&titleID=3439943
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- Lea A Novel
- crossRefId
- 3439943
- subtitle
- A Novel
- id
- 705E6DFE-9813-490A-96C2-AB30E957C6C0
- starRating
- 2.5
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: Lea_9780802189301_3439943
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 2733958
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780802189301
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: 0
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 1
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 4/24/2019
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=705e6dfe-9813-490a-96c2-ab30e957c6c0&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: Lea_3439943
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B074N9174D
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 4/24/2019
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=705e6dfe-9813-490a-96c2-ab30e957c6c0&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: Lea_9780802189301_3439943
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 2383135
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780802189301
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 4/24/2019
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=705e6dfe-9813-490a-96c2-ab30e957c6c0&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: Mercier, Pascal
- bioText: A professor of philosophy, Pascal Mercier was born in 1944 in Bern, Switzerland. He is the author of numerous novels including the bestselling Night Train to Lisbon and Perlmann's Silence. He was awarded the Marie Luise Kaschnitz Prize, the Grinzane Cavour Prize, and he received the Lichtenberg Medal. He lives in Berlin, Germany.
- name: Pascal Mercier
- imprint
- Grove Press
- publishDate
- 2017-09-12T00:00:00-04:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- Lea
- fullDescription
- From the author of Night Train to Lisbon: a father’s story about his daughter unravels “[a] tale of grief, fraud, guilt and madness . . . Revelatory” (The New York Times Book Review).
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 - reviews
- premium: False
- source: Harper's magazine
- content: "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."
- premium: False
- source: Chicago Sun-Times
- content: "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."
- premium: False
- source: Seattle Times
- content: "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."
- premium: False
- source: San Diego Union-Tribune
- content: "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."
- premium: False
- source: Shelf Awareness
- content: "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."
- premium: False
- source: Kirkus Reviews
- content: "A compelling blend of suspenseful narrative and discursive commentary . . . an intriguing fiction."
- premium: False
- source: San Francisco Chronicle
- content: "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."
- premium: False
- source: New Yorker
- content: "Absorbing . . . [Mercier] understands the soft sniping that sustains academic rivalries and draws wry comedy from them."
- premium: False
- source: Evening Standard
- content: "An engrossing deep study of one man's mind. Superb."
- premium: False
- source: Alberto Manguel, The Guardian (UK)
- content: "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."
- premium: False
- source: Nick DiMartino, Shelf Awareness
- content: "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."
- premium: False
- source: Kirkus Reviews
- content: "For readers of a philosophical bent, appreciative of slowly unfolding, elegant tales, this will be a pleasure."
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
August 1, 2017
Two men from Bern who can no longer trust their hands--one is a recently retired surgeon who can't hold a scalpel without trembling and the other can't hold a steering wheel without contemplating suicide--meet by chance in a cafe in Provence.Both are also wifeless fathers to grown daughters from whom they are estranged, or worse. Adrian Herzog, the novel's narrator, soon learns that his new acquaintance, Martijn van Vliet, is reeling from his daughter Lea's death. The strangers quickly bond as van Vliet tells the story of Lea's descent due to an unnamed mental illness, beginning with the time the father and then-8-year-old girl encountered an enigmatic masked woman playing the violin in a train station. As they listened, van Vliet grew convinced that this woman's playing had managed to pierce the armor of grief his young daughter had worn since her mother's death a year earlier. He concludes that in this moment a "new will had formed" inside her, a will toward life, betraying her intense desire to learn to play the violin. Her knack for the instrument develops into an obsession for the pair and eventually a glamorous career for Lea--that is, until her breakdown. Van Viet tells his story with the fear that what he once considered the only way for his daughter to overcome her grief may well have been what destroyed her. Above all, he's desperate to believe in his own innocence as a father and finds in Herzog an exceedingly eager and compassionate listener. The relationship that develops between the two men is well-wrought and their subtle affinities numerous, but the book lacks a probing analysis of the father-daughter relationship. Van Vliet admits that he imagined his daughter "a fairy by nature," and her characterization is reminiscent of Romantic tropes: a precocious prodigy, a frigid and fragile "countess...unaware of her aura." Needless to say, she doesn't speak much in her father's tale, apart from uttering imperious commands in French. The moments later meant to signify her mental break fall flat, even in scenes meant to depict her rage. This lack is exacerbated by moments of sexist and racist outbursts from the protagonist. For instance, van Vliet says of a co-worker: "I destroyed Ruth Adamek, who had never forgiven me for not falling for her miniskirt," and frequently refers to his daughter's psychologist as "the Maghrebi" who would cast him "black, Arab looks." Despite Mercier's (Perlmann's Silence, 2012, etc.) lyricism and occasional emotional acuity, the book's depiction of suffering does little to elaborate its closing observation that "there is unhappiness of a dimension so great that it is unbearable."COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
September 1, 2017
Martijn van Vliet and Adrian Herzog meet accidentally in a cafe in Provence, France. Both have daughters, both have lost their wives, and both are casting about for a reason to continue living. Martijn befriends Adrian so he can tell him his story. His daughter Lea was lost in grief after her mother's death until she hears a violin played in a train station. The performance captivates her, and she declares that she would learn to play the violin. Her latent talent is revealed, sweeping her into a world of performance and practice. Her father neglects his career to support her and remain close to her. But cracks begin to appear in her mental stability, and her father, concerned for her welfare, carries out a daring and illegal plan to bring her back from the brink of collapse. Mercier (Night Train to Lisbon) tells a heartbreaking story of a father's love for his child. His two main characters emphasize the parallel lines in the lives of men and the differences that make their experiences unique. VERDICT This tragedy, told in the style of Somerset Maugham, will appeal to serious fiction readers.--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
August 1, 2017
In international best-selling Mercier's (Night Train to Lisbon, 2008) psychologically astute portrait of an emotionally damaged family, Martijn Van Vliet, a successful biocyberneticist, is raising his daughter, Lea, alone following the death of his wife from leukemia. Eight-year-old Lea, withdrawn and troubled, discovers her destiny when she hears the strains of a Bach partita emanating from the depths of the Bern train station and asks her father for a violin. Music becomes for Lea a surrogate for the motherly love she so desperately needs. Lea quickly develops her prodigious talent and sells out music halls across Europe while she is still in her teens. Mercier subtly and brilliantly builds tension as he paints Lea's rise followed by a descent into artistic obsession, and the consequences of Martijn's desperate attempt to save his daughter. Mercier skillfully depicts how an all-consuming love can destroy that which is most dearly loved and, in the devastating climax, how passion can subversively overcome reason and break hearts. For fans of Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
- popularity
- 25
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/705e6dfe-9813-490a-96c2-ab30e957c6c0/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- 705e6dfe-9813-490a-96c2-ab30e957c6c0
- starRating
- 2.5
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2363-1/{705E6DFE-9813-490A-96C2-AB30E957C6C0}IMG100.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2363-1/{705E6DFE-9813-490A-96C2-AB30E957C6C0}IMG200.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2363-1/{705E6DFE-9813-490A-96C2-AB30E957C6C0}IMG150.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2363-1/{705E6DFE-9813-490A-96C2-AB30E957C6C0}IMG400.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Fiction
- value: Literature
- publishDateText
- 09/12/2017
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780802121660
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
- From the author of Night Train to Lisbon: a father’s story about his daughter unravels “[a] tale of grief, fraud, guilt and madness . . . Revelatory” (The New York Times Book Review).
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... - sortTitle
- Lea A Novel
- crossRefId
- 3439943
- subtitle
- A Novel
- publisher
- Grove Atlantic
- bisacCodes
- code: FIC019000
- description: Fiction / Literary
- code: FIC025000
- description: Fiction / Psychological
