The Margot Affair

""There were so many of us, children of these double families who dreamed of the other side. That night, I fantasized about the separate spheres of our lives colliding..." Introspective and headstrong, and fueled by an intensity she can't name, Margot Louve has lived as her parents' secret. For seventeen years, her father - an influential French politician with presidential ambitions - has led a double life, his only contact with Margot and her mother in moments stolen from his wife and his official duties. Margot's mother, Anouk - a charismatic and prominent stage actress - constructs a private, shimmering world of secrecy around their hidden family in their tiny Parisian apartment on the Left Bank. It is a carefully constructed house of cards that Margot decides fatefully to tumble when one evening, at the opening night of one of her mother's plays, she meets the man who will set her plan in motion: the powerful and well-regarded journalist David Perrin. The next day, the front pages of the morning papers are emblazoned with news of the affair, and Margot finds herself drawn into another marriage - that of David and his beguiling wife Brigitte, each of whom want more from her than she is willing to give up. In just one stunning revelation, Margot discovers how her impulsive decision will change the contours of everyone's life around her in ways she could never have imagined. In this simmering debut, Sanaèe Lemoine exposes the seams between private and public faces, truth and deceit, love and persuasion. Insightful and moving, woven in sensuous prose, The Margot Affair explores razor-sharp turns between women - from the bone-deep bond between mothers and daughters to the devotion and betrayal of friendship - and the dangers of pushing beyond the boundaries of a life lived in the shadows"--