Con Brio

In a brasserie just off the Boulevard St Germain, a distinguished novelist watches, entranced, the motions of a young woman's hands folding a restaurant bill into a paper boat. This passing observation - slim fingers against a white linen tablecloth - provides the springboard for a compelling story of desire and jealousy in Brina Svit's explosive new novel, Con Brio. The respected author's comfortable life vanishes the instant he admires this strange woman's hands; the discipline of forty productive years dissolves. On an impulse he proposes to her. She answers without hesitation: yes, she will marry him, but on her terms. She will live with him, but they are to remain strangers. Soon Kati has driven Tibor's housekeeper, secretary and even his cat from his home. And as she continues to hold Tibor at arms' length, he goes from being a cool observer of the chaos she creates, to a man driven wild by passion and jealousy. With a brutality offset only by the elegance and subtlety of Svit's writing. Con Brio - like Death in Venice before it - dramatises the ruinous consequences of sexual obsession.