Old-fashioned modern fairy-tale: The man with dancing eyes by Sophie Dahl
"The lovely thing about writing the book was that I knew it wasn’t going to be a novel. It is (I hope) the sort of self indulgent book you can read on a melancholic Sunday afternoon swaddled in blankets." Sophie Dahl
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a fashion model wrote a book? Sophie Dahl had everything one would need for inspiration - she's got good creative genes, family, environment, beauty and brains. No wonder she decided to give it a go.
The man with dancing eyes is a truly girly girl's book that you read when your heart and soul seek beautiful comfort, musical sentences and fairy-tale stories. You read it in a matter of hours, pausing from time to time to absorb and savour the most charmingly sweet quotes.
Pierre is the heroine of this fairy-tale love story. She lives in London, loves shoes and goes to parties from time to time, which is something very typical for a young London girl with a heavily bohemian background in her Louboutins who only gets to wear them when she is not working in an old book store. And just like any girl Pierre falls in love with a man of artistic nature who has "the most wicked and dancing eyes she'd ever seen" and knows all the right words that would sound like a dream to any girl. And this is where the magic (and the novel) truly begins accompanied by regular deliveries of sweet peas.
"They laughed and laughed, unable to eat, for who can... and who wants... and who needs to... EAT... when it's the beginning of love?"
The book is filled with beautiful drawings by Annie Morris, simple, adorable and unique. "On the day I left to fly home to New York I called Annie Morris a brilliant artist and friend since childhood. I knew she was the only person to draw Pierre. I also knew that, under the guise of getting her to draw Pierre, she would come to New York where we could have long leisurely breakfasts at Balthazar and lazily trawl the Chelsea flea market. This we did and she did also draw Pierre — magnificently." Sophie wrote on her website.
The novel was published in 2003 and that's when I bought it (well, actually, Vogue recommended it and how could I not trust Vogue?!) I read it several times since then and now decided to write about it here, so you can enjoy it too and awake your inner romantic self we all have inside but happen to ignore as our lives become too hectic, modern and filled with daily not-so-romantic activities.
The book is available on amazon.
Photo: Sophie Dahl by Ryan Michael Kelly
0 comments:
Post a Comment