An irresistible story of a woman remaking her life after her husband's betrayal leads to a year
of travel art and passion in Paris from the award-winning author of This Close to Okay.
Vincent having grown up as the privileged daughter of artists has a lovely life in many ways.
At forty-four she enjoys strolling the streets of Paris and teaching at the modern art museum
she has a vibrant group of friends and she's even caught the eye of a young charismatic man
named Loup. But Vincent is also in Paris to escape a painful betrayal: her husband Cillian
has published a bestselling book divulging secrets about their marriage and his own past
hinting that when he was a teenager he may have had a child with a young woman back in
Dublin-before he moved to California and never returned. Now estranged from her husband
Vincent has agreed to see Cillian again at their son's wedding the following summer but Loup
introduces new complications. Soon they begin an intense affair and somewhere between dinners
made together cigarettes smoked in the moonlight hazy evenings in nightclubs and long
starry walks along the Seine Vincent feels herself loosening and blossoming. In a journey that
is both transportive and intimate Half-Blown Rose traverses Paris art travel liminal spaces
and the messy complexities of relationships and romance with excerpts from Cillian's novel
playlists and journal entries woven throughout. As Cillian does all he can to win her back
Vincent must decide what she wants . . . and who she will be.
