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A "literary tsunami" that is taking the world by storm - already sold in over 30 countries - about one unforgettable woman's search for a meaningful life.
Blanca is forty years old and motherless. Shaken by the unexpected death of the most important person in her life, she suddenly realizes that she has no idea what her future will look like.
To ease her dizzying grief and confusion, Blanca turns to her dearest friends, her closest family, and a change of scenery. Leaving Barcelona behind, she returns to Cadaqués on the coast, accompanied by her two sons, two ex-husbands, and two best friends, and makes a plan to meet her married lover for a few stolen moments as well. Surrounded by those she loves most, she spends the summer in an impossibly beautiful place, finding ways to reconnect and understand what it means to truly, happily live on her own terms, just as her mother would have wanted.
A fresh, honest, and ruefully funny story about love, sex, marriage, grief, friendship and parenthood,This Too Shall Pass is an irresistible novel that is fast becoming an international phenomenon.
"Starred Review. [A] summery, sexy, cool debut novel…light, profound, sensual, unmistakably European: this may be the only book about grief to feel like a vacation." - Kirkus
"Witty and playful in tone as well as poignant and reflective, Busquets' novel is drawn in part from the loss of her own mother, a prominent publishing figure in Spain. The seductions of its setting add to its appeal for American readers." - Booklist
"Daughter of formidable Spanish publisher Esther Busquets, whose death inspired this book, Busquets nicely captures the competing forces of needing to grieve and wanting to live, creating a distinctive portrait of one woman's loss." - Library Journal
"A literary tsunami...A seductive voice, one that wants to take a strong bite of life." - Silvia Marimon, ARA (Spain)
"A pure concentrate of emotion and intelligence ... Unforgettable." - Marie Claire (France)
"The book of the summer."- Vogue (France)
"One of the most elegant books you can read." - L'Express (France)
"A luminous and profound book." - ELLE (France)
"Therein lies the secret of this short and deeply intense novel: in the building of a conscience that has been suddenly expelled from paradise." - El Periódico (Spain)
"One of the most beautiful reads of 2015." - AMICA (Italy)
"An intense novel, with delicate prose, both touching and deeply funny." - El Cultural (Spain)
"A praiseworthy and truly literary work." - La Vanguardia (Spain)
"[This Too Shall Pass is] full of subtle wisdom." - Harper's Bazaar
"This Too Shall Pass is an intimate story about loss and mourning, about saying goodbye, growing up; it's funny and the love for life jumps from the page. But mostly it is a declaration of love from a daughter who cannot forget her mother. Who doesn't want to forget." - Trow (The Netherlands)
"A moving declaration of love to a dead mother and an accomplished balancing act on the thin line between lightness and tragedy." - De Standaard (The Netherlands)
"Atypical, crazy, comical, painful. An original tale of loss that alternates vitality and grief, making them coincide, also in style: in the natural flow, without interruption, from the third person narrator to the first: you, mother." - Il Corriere de la Sera (Italy)
"This is not a distressing tale, on the contrary, it is full of life and sex." - Il Secolo XIX (Italy)
"A brilliant, lucid, poignant, bare and aching memory of a good-bye."- Juan Marsé
"Intense." - Femina (Sweden)
This information about This Too Shall Pass was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Milena Busquets was born in Barcelona where she attended the Lycée Français de Barcelone. She obtained a degree in archaeology from the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, began work in publishing, and has since founded her own publishing house. She currently works as a journalist and as a translator.
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