Full Description
In Banyuls-sur-Mer, French Catalonia, the Villa Wintrebert turns its
back on passers-by and looks instead down the length of its enormously
long, tropical garden. Renamed after the pioneering naturalist Paul
Wintrebert, who once lived there with his wife, the villa was also aptly
known as 'Loin des Yeux' (Out of Sight). In her speculative history of
the place, its inhabitants and visitors, Penelope Curtis imagines the
relationships of tenderness and passion across three generations of
women, witnessed at a distance by two little girls. Harmony is disrupted
when a well-intentioned commission to the renowned local sculptor,
Aristide Maillol, shines a light on the fundamental fragility of the
women's relationship. Villa Wintrebert is a story
of childhood, of adult complicity, and of the unfinished sculpture which
fractures the female friendship on which the villa and its garden had
depended.
