Synopses & Reviews
A gripping novel about a seemingly charmed marriage and a mysterious disappearance at sea
In 1905, a tourist agent and amateur antiques collector named Armand de Potter mysteriously disappeared off the coast of Greece. His body is never recovered and his wife is left to manage his affairs on her own. But as she starts to piece together his life, she realizes that everything was not as he had said. Infused with details from letters and diary entries, the narrative twists forward and backward through time, revealing a lost world of fake identities, underground antiques networks, and a husband who wasnt what he seemed.
Originally from Belgium, young Armand de Potter comes to New York without a penny in his pocket. With cunning ambition, he quickly makes a name for himself as both a worldwide travel guide and a trusted—if illegal—antiques dealer. After marrying, he moves the family to a luxurious villa in Cannes and embraces an aristocratic life. But as he grows increasingly entangled in the antiques trade and his touring business begins to falter, Armands control starts to fray. As the world closes in, he believes he only has one option left.
Told with masterful narrative agility, De Potters Grand Tour is a tale as grand as the tour guide at its center. Drawing on real letters, legal documents, and a trove of diaries only recently discovered, Joanna Scott points delicately toward the storys historical basis and unfolds a detective tale of the highest order.
Review
Praise for Joanna Scott
“Scotts prose is sensitive and beautifully crafted . . . Her characters are both eminently human and touched with magic and mystery.” —The Washington Post Book World
“The wit, the magical prose and the daring devices of Scotts writing create an enchantment.” —The Nation
Review
Praise for
De Potter's Grand Tour:"What a whirl of a book, full of secrets and surprises. I read
De Potters Grand Tour in a couple of days, losing myself in its pages, sorry to see the last words run like swift water under the bridge where I lingered, novel in hand. Joanna Scott is among the handful of American writers I will always want to read, and here she offers a capacious circumnavigation of a world tinged by melancholy, love, mystery, shimmering beauty, and unlikely passion. A lovely and strangely affecting read." —Jay Parini, author of
The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoys Final YearPraise for Joanna Scott:
“Scotts prose is sensitive and beautifully crafted . . . Her characters are both eminently human and touched with magic and mystery.” —The Washington Post Book World
“The wit, the magical prose and the daring devices of Scotts writing create an enchantment.” —The Nation
Review
Praise for
De Potter's Grand Tour:"Joanna Scott is a writer to treasure and her beguiling new novel is an intrepid exploration of the world, of the past, and of the human heart." —Peter Ho Davies, author of
The Welsh Girl"Joanna Scotts writing is always a wonder, but this, with its hints of Hawthornes ‘Wakefield, is her best yet: a wizardly dialogue between fact and fiction, the known and the unknown. Ill be haunted by her elusive, touching, and deluded hero for a long time." —Andrea Barrett, author of
Archangel and
Ship Fever"Joanna Scott is the great tour guide of contemporary American fiction, navigating us across oceans of memory and longing. She doesnt sail around the reefs and shoals but steers us right for them, keeping every promise that well emerge on the other side intact, if not quite the same as before. In the company of Aimée de Potter as she intrepidly searches for her husbands ghost and secrets, Scott charts here one of her grandest tours yet, one more utterly singular story only she could have written." —Steve Erickson, author of These Dreams of You"Like some exquisite and mysterious tapestry that Armand de Potter himself might have admired on one of his journeys, Joanna Scott's new novel masterfully weaves an irresistible story of love, secrecy, ambition, and devastating folly. De Potter's Grand Tour coalesces history and imagination with such brilliant clarity that a world now long lost seems like a personal experience freshly remembered. Joanna Scott is a magician, a conjurer, one of the very best writers at work today." —Bradford Morrow, author of The Diviner's Tale"Only one of our wisest, deftest, most knowing prose stylists at the height of her powers could have invented the utterly beguiling experience that is De Potters Grand Tour. Joanna Scott has given us a daringly original and serious novel that in its magical rendering of the interior voices of a Gilded Age European adventurer and his American wife is as credible and moving as it is historically astute. One of the most delightful books Ive read in years." —Jaimy Gordon, author of Lord of Misrule"What a whirl of a book, full of secrets and surprises. I read De Potters Grand Tour in a couple of days, losing myself in its pages, sorry to see the last words run like swift water under the bridge where I lingered, novel in hand. Joanna Scott is among the handful of American writers I will always want to read, and here she offers a capacious circumnavigation of a world tinged by melancholy, love, mystery, shimmering beauty, and unlikely passion. A lovely and strangely affecting read." —Jay Parini, author of The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoys Final Year"Joanna Scott's forthcoming novel, De Potter's Grand Tour, is a delicate, enchanting, utterly delicious text, melancholy at the heart and yet slyly funny. Scott is of course a fearlessly intelligent writer, and this book is surely one of her finest. An aching quandary at its center, a question of love and abandonment involving exotic travel." —Louise Erdrich, Birchbark Books BlogPraise for Joanna Scott:
“Scotts prose is sensitive and beautifully crafted . . . Her characters are both eminently human and touched with magic and mystery.” —The Washington Post Book World
“The wit, the magical prose and the daring devices of Scotts writing create an enchantment.” —The Nation
About the Author
Joanna Scott is the author of ten books, including The Manikin, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Various Antidotes and Arrogance, which were both finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award; and the critically acclaimed Make Believe, Tourmaline, Liberation, and Follow Me. She is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Award.