Book Spotlight: The Life You Had Imagined

I’m trying to seriously clean up my bookshelves so I’m going throughs books that were sent to me for PR that I haven’t gotten to read. The Life You Had Imagined by Nelly Alard was sent to me a year ago (yikes!) and it sounds so interesting, but I just never got the time to read it so I wanted to at least cover it with a book spotlight.

Synopsis

The relationships between Hollywood celebrities and royalty have a long history; fascination and devotion continue to grow from Grace Kelly to Meghan Markle. In her novel, The Life You Had Imagined, Nelly Alard explores a time in 1930s Hollywood when an actress and her mother claimed to be connected to the ruler of the Austrian Empire.

In October 1930, a young actress named Elissa Landi, touted by Fox Studios as the next Greta Garbo sets foot in Hollywood. She has talent, striking looks, and a mysterious background. Her mother has always claimed she is the hidden daughter of Austria’s free-spirited Empress Elisabeth (Sisi). Nelly Alard, a contemporary French actress in Hollywood, investigates the connection between Elisabeth and Elissa’s mother, Karoline. Would the famously free-spirited and eccentric Elisabeth have a child in secret away from the stuffy Viennese court, and why would her mother go out of her way to air these theories, exposing herself to the retaliation of the Austrian Empire?

Readers see how Alard manages the ups and downs of her career as an actress, from her childhood dreams of stardom to her first literary efforts. Mixing the old Hollywood glamour of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and the autofiction of Jenny Offil and Sheila Heti, Alard uses her own life as the backdrop to her investigation into Sisi. In her search, we find the coincidences and connections in her life to Karoline, Elisabeth, and Elissa.

In this third novel, award-winning author Nelly Alard thrusts us into the lives of three glamorous, fiercely independent women, intertwining epochs and characters with a fluidity that brings them to life on the page, both vivid and authentic. Full of surprising twists and witty personal insights, it is as brilliant in its formal aspects as it is thought-provoking and surprising in content. Published in France, it was enthusiastically received by audiences and critics alike.