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The Twelve Rooms of the Nile
The Twelve Rooms of the Nile | Enid Shomer
4 posts | 3 read | 8 to read
Before she became the nineteenth century’s greatest heroine, before he had written a word of Madame Bovary, Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert traveled down the Nile at the same time. In the imaginative leap taken by award-winning writer Enid Shomer’s The Twelve Rooms of the Nile, the two ignite a passionate friendship marked by intelligence, humor, and a ravishing tenderness that will alter both their destinies. In 1850, Florence, daughter of a prominent English family, sets sail on the Nile chaperoned by longtime family friends and her maid, Trout. To her family’s chagrin—and in spite of her wealth, charm, and beauty—she is, at twenty-nine and of her own volition, well on her way to spinsterhood. Meanwhile, Gustave and his good friend Maxime Du Camp embark on an expedition to document the then largely unexplored monuments of ancient Egypt. Traumatized by the deaths of his father and sister, and plagued by mysterious seizures, Flaubert has dropped out of law school and writ-ten his first novel, an effort promptly deemed unpublishable by his closest friends. At twenty-eight, he is an unproven writer with a failing body. Florence is a woman with radical ideas about society and God, naive in the ways of men. Gustave is a notorious womanizer and patron of innumerable prostitutes. But both burn with unfulfilled ambition, and in the deft hands of Shomer, whose writing The New York Times Book Review has praised as “beautifully cadenced, and surprising in its imaginative reach,” the unlikely soul mates come together to share their darkest torments and most fervent hopes. Brimming with adventure and the sparkling sensibilities of the two travelers, this mesmerizing novel offers a luminous combination of gorgeous prose and wild imagination, all of it colored by the opulent tapestry of mid-nineteenth-century Egypt.
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review
kathleenaflynn
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Pickpick

This was excellent! An imagined version of historical fiction. Florence Nightingale and Flaubert, both in their late 20s and not yet famous, toured the Nile at the same time in 1850. Though they never met, this book imagines what it might have been like if they did. Despite not knowing much about either person or Egypt, I loved this. It‘s beautifully written — the author is a poet— and haunting.

10 likes1 stack add
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Ke633
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SilversReviews I like this cover - the title is appealing too. 6y
36 likes2 stack adds1 comment
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Jess_Read_This
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Gustave Flaubert and Florence Nightingale walk onto a ship headed on the Nile... Stop me if you've heard this one..😂
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•#maps #lyricalapril #nile #historicalfiction #twounlikelysoulmates #original #interestingconcept #bookmap #weareonaboat

DGRachel I detested Madame Bovary, but this intrigues me. 8y
Jess_Read_This @DGRachel Similar thoughts here- this follows him before he wrote it. The two are so shockingly dissimilar I was intrigued with this one. Especially as the description of the book pegs them as "unlikely soulmates come together to share their darkest torments and most fervent hopes" - slightly dramatic but intriguing- 8y
Cinfhen I agree, I like the set up... 8y
44 likes2 stack adds3 comments
review
Rrkaras1
Pickpick

It was a long book, but the characters and historical settings really kept my interest. I was sad when I finished it because I enjoyed it so much:)