Palace of the Drowned: A Novel

by Christine Mangan

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Who can ever know the inner life of a writer? Days, weeks, months spent alone in their heads conjuring up worlds that many of us never knew existed. Most of the time, those worlds don’t exist. But on a rare occasion, the slope gets slippery, when an avid fan chooses to make an author’s imagination a reality. Enjoy this one as the lines blur.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250788436
Publisher:	Flatiron Books
Publication date:	03/01/2022
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Christine Mangan is the author of the national bestseller Tangerine and Palace of the Drowned. She has her Ph.D. in English from University College Dublin, with a focus on 18th-century Gothic literature, and an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Southern Maine. She lives in Detroit.

Editorial Reviews

A lush, malice-infused mystery.” —The New York Times

“Lush, evocative. . . . When you learn the truth at the end, you’ll want to go back and rethink everything you read before.” —New York Times Book Review

“A perceptive character study. Mangan’s accomplished second novel spins on low-boil psychological underpinnings, with a threat of violence; Palace of the Drowned shrewdly echoes Patricia Highsmith, Gaslight, and All About Eve.” —Oline Cogdill, Shelf Awareness

“Atmospheric, twisting, and full of mystery, Palace of the Drowned is a darkly delightful trip of a book.” —Refinery29

“A great psychological thriller with a very unexpected ending.” —Palm Beach Daily News

“Mangan’s writing is crisp at one turn and slippery at the next. . . . The result is a page-turning thriller with a setting just as well imagined as the characters who inhabit it.” —Veranda Magazine

“With atmospheric writing and a literary bent, Palace of the Drowned is as much an exploration of the use of language and a study of the artistic experience, as it is a revelation of plot.” —The New York Journal of Books

"Mangan’s taut plot consists of more satisfying turns than there are calli and campi in the impermanent, unknowable City of Bridges itself." —The New Yorker

“Voluptuously atmospheric and surefooted at every turn, Palace of the Drowned more than delivers on the promise of Mangan’s debut, and firmly establishes her as a writer of consequence.” —Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and When the Stars Go Dark

Veranda Magazine Book Club Pick for June

Most Anticipated Summer Reading from:

Crime Reads

New York Post

Refinery 29

Bustle

Entertainment Weekly

Yahoo!

Medium.com

From the Publisher

2021-04-14
A bestselling British author takes refuge from self-inflicted scandal in Venice.

Fortunately, this novel is set in the 1960s, since its most crucial plot developments could not have occurred in the 2020s. Glaring among these is the fact that going to Venice to escape a scandal in London would no longer be an option, scandals being inescapable. Stung by a dismissive anonymous review of her latest novel, Frances “Frankie” Croy seethes for a few weeks, then, at a literary gala, confides drunkenly in a waiter before slugging a stranger. The waiter turns out to be a tabloid reporter. After Frankie spends a stint in a posh asylum, her best friend, Jack, offers her family’s palazzo in Venice as a place for Frankie to recuperate and perhaps start the fifth novel her faithful editor, Harold, has been nagging her for. To Frankie’s consternation, Jack and her husband, Leonard, delay joining her in Venice, which, conveniently for the plot, allows Frankie to get in the kind of trouble a lonely midlife author is prone to, especially one with a severe but unacknowledged drinking problem and who fears her talent is waning. Enter 26-year-old fan/stalker Gilly, who buttonholes Frankie in the fish market, claiming to be the daughter of a colleague. At first, Frankie is charmed by Gilly’s youthful hero worship and willingness to befriend an older woman of 42. But something is “off” about “the girl.” Are Gilly’s changing stories calculated or absent-minded? Much of the suspense here is driven by misdirection, abetted by Frankie’s puzzling inability to ask pointed questions. Not surprisingly, it develops that Gilly herself has writerly ambitions, and the narrative takes an All About Eve turn. A reference to Patricia Highsmith, like Chekhov’s gun, will also play out, because Gilly has much in common with Ripley, in that her real aim is to supplant her hero. These tropes wind down in a not entirely unexpected but fitting way.

Against the grim backdrop of off-season Venice, literary rivalry can be menacing.

Kirkus Reviews