Victoria Redel – författare

"Spellbinding, wonderfully atmospheric, and impossible to forget" Sarah Jessica Parker"With echoes of Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep, I am You is earthy and fleshy and pulsates with suppressed emotions of rage, envy and desire." Elizabeth FremantleAt eight years old, Gerta Pieters is forced to disguise herself as a boy and sent to work for a genteel family. When their daughter Maria sees through Gerta’s ruse, she insists Gerta accompany her to Amsterdam and help her enter the elite, male-dominated art world.While Maria rises in the ranks of society as a painting prodigy, Gerta makes herself invaluable in every way: confidante, muse, lover. But as Gerta steps into her own talents, their relationship fractures into a complex web of obsession and rivalry, until the secrets they keep threaten to unravel everything.A mesmerising historical novel, I Am You is a meditation on gender, an ode to artistic creation, and an unforgettable love story that reimagines the life of renowned painter Maria van Oosterwijck during the Dutch Golden Age.

A PRIMA BEST READ OF 2017'At once tough and tender, funny and sad, this beautifully written novel articulates the dynamic realities of those wondrous friendships that last a lifetime.' Siri HustvedtAnna, Molly, Ming, Caroline, Helen: the Old Friends.Since adopting their official name aged eleven, they have seen each other through careers, children, illnesses, marriage, divorce, addiction, fame, fall outs.But now, Anna - fiercely loved mother and friend, and the Old Friends' glue - is diagnosed with cancer again, and this time, tired of recoveries and relapses, pitying looks and exhausting regimes, she simply says: no more.As her health declines, the politics of the still lived-in world merge with memories of the past while each Old Friend tries to accept the truth of what is happening: they are losing someone they cannot imagine life without.Before Everything is a celebration of friendship and love between a group of wonderful women. End of sixth grade they made it their official name. It was a joke one afternoon but they liked the way it sounded. Permanent. The Old Friends. This way, the five girls agree, it's just a fact. And ours forever.

What does it mean to be a woman—a lover, mother and artist? In Swoon, Redel tackles the question of Eros as it animates domestic life. These are poems unafraid to embrace the sweetness of difficulty and the difficult sweetness of intimacy. Using short and extended lyric, prose poem, circular narrative, Redel refuses formal categorization, demanding of poetry a complex and textured vision of the female experience. Swoon is a robustly sexy, intelligent, daring book of poems.

A group of lifetime friends gather together to confront life, love, and now mortality“Everything you want a novel about life, death, and friendship to be—smart, moving, sweeping, poetic, stinging, just beautiful. I loved these women (and their men) and this elegy to their long-reaching bonds.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage Before Everything is a celebration of friendship and love between a group of women who have known each another since they were girls. They’ve faced everything together, from youthful sprees and scrapes to mid-life turning points. Now, as Anna, the group’s trailblazer and brightest spark, enters hospice, they gather to do what they’ve always done—talk and laugh and help each other make choices and plans, this time in Anna’s rural Massachusetts home. Helen, Anna’s best friend and a celebrated painter, is about to remarry. The others face their own challenges—Caroline with her sister’s mental health crisis; Molly with a teenage daughter’s rebellion; Ming with her law practice—dilemmas with kids and work and love.Before Everything is as funny as it is bittersweet, as the friends revel in the hilarious mistakes they’ve seen one another through, the secrets kept, and adventures shared. But now all sense of time has shifted, and the pattern of their lives together takes on new meaning. The novel offers a brilliant, emotionally charged portrait, deftly conveying the sweep of time over everyday lives, and showing how even in difficult endings, gifts can unfold. Above all it is an ode to friendship, and to how one person shapes the journeys of those around her.

'Redel proves that female friendship is the quiet, steady engine that truly runs the world.' Hannah Tinti'At once tough and tender, funny and sad, this beautifully written novel articulates the dynamic realities of those wondrous friendships that last a lifetime.' Siri HustvedtFrom youthful scrapes to mid-life turning points, the Old Friends have faced everything together.So as Anna, their brightest spark, enters hospice, they gather to do what they've always done: they laugh and eat, and help each other make choices and plans, and talk through dilemmas with children and work and love. But now the sense of time has shifted, and the pattern of their lives takes on a new, urgent meaning. As their shared experiences are recounted and re-lived, this funny, bittersweet ode to friendship shows how even in difficult endings, gifts can unfold. 'Gorgeous, a heartbreaker, a non-stop dazzler, a major achievement.' Michael Cunningham'One of the most brilliant, radiant and heartbreaking books I've read in years.' Molly Antopol

At 41, single professor Sara Leader decides to create a family by adopting a child. After the adoption agency asks for details about her background, Sara reluctantly begins to probe her father’s secret history — in particular, his flight as a 17-year-old Holocaust refugee aboard a ship denied entry into America. The more she learns about her father’s past, the more Sara feels the need to question him about what happened — and the more she realizes how her father’s secrets have shaped her own life. Alternating between a teenage boy’s energetic letters to Eleanor Roosevelt and a daughter’s sifting through the fragments of her father’s traumatic wartime choices, Victoria Redel brilliantly imbues her characters with not only bravery and strength but with the humor to survive the pain of the past and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.

“I like Victoria Redel’s poems because of their braveness and their lucidity… .There is no flight here to incoherence; the poems speak plainly and, in some cases, beautifully. The music is lovely and the tone, distinctive… .” —Gerald Stern

“I like Victoria Redel’s poems because of their braveness and their lucidity… .There is no flight here to incoherence; the poems speak plainly and, in some cases, beautifully. The music is lovely and the tone, distinctive… .” —Gerald Stern

This “lush, sexy, absorbing novel” of historical fiction “brings to life two artists who are inextricably linked in passion and competition” (Melissa Febos, bestselling author of Girlhood)A “captivating” lesbian romance set in the “wonderfully atmospheric” art world of 1600s Amsterdam (Sarah Jessica Parker, SJP Lit)At eight years old, Gerta Pieters is forced to disguise herself as a boy and sent to work for a genteel Dutch family. When their brilliant and beautiful daughter Maria sees through Gerta’s ruse, she insists that Gerta accompany her to Amsterdam and help her enter the elite, male-dominated art world.While Maria rises in the ranks of society as a painting prodigy, Gerta makes herself invaluable in every way: confidante, muse, lover. But as Gerta steps into her own talents, their relationship fractures into a complex web of obsession and rivalry—and the secrets they keep threaten to unravel everything.A mesmerizing historical novel, I Am You is a meditation on gender, an ode to artistic creation, and an unforgettable love story that reimagines the life of renowned still life painter Maria van Oosterwijck during the Dutch Golden Age.“A stunning accomplishment.” —Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Day and The Hours“[A] transporting epic of making art and love.” —Booklist

"Spellbinding, wonderfully atmospheric, and impossible to forget" Sarah Jessica Parker"With echoes of Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep, I am You is earthy and fleshy and pulsates with suppressed emotions of rage, envy and desire." Elizabeth FremantleAt eight years old, Gerta Pieters is forced to disguise herself as a boy and sent to work for a genteel family. When their daughter Maria sees through Gerta’s ruse, she insists Gerta accompany her to Amsterdam and help her enter the elite, male-dominated art world.While Maria rises in the ranks of society as a painting prodigy, Gerta makes herself invaluable in every way: confidante, muse, lover. But as Gerta steps into her own talents, their relationship fractures into a complex web of obsession and rivalry, until the secrets they keep threaten to unravel everything.A mesmerising historical novel, I Am You is a meditation on gender, an ode to artistic creation, and an unforgettable love story that reimagines the life of renowned painter Maria van Oosterwijck during the Dutch Golden Age.