After her accident Frida Kahlo has lost everything: her body, her fiancé Alejandro and her bold spirit but, lying recuperating, she discovers the power of colour. And as if obsessed, she knows that her future is with Mexico’s most famous – and ugliest – muralist, the lady’s man Diego Rivera. And so she sets out to find him and gives him no choice but to love her in return. Together they will experience wild parties, success, scandal, travel and affairs. They will tear each other part and get back together. And they will paint.
How to tell the story of a legend? Claire Berest succeeds in bringing to life this mythical couple – Frida and Diego, Diego and Frida – who form a single being, a two-headed monster. The author takes us headlong into the upheavals of communist Mexico, the beginnings of American capitalism, the Europe of the surrealists and, above all, all-consuming love.
Claire Berest published her first novel Mikado when she was 27. Then came two other novels (L’orchestre vide and Bellevue) and two essays (La lutte des classes, pourquoi j’ai démissionné de l’Éducation nationale, and Enfants perdus, enquête à la brigade des mineurs). She also cowrote Gabriële (60,000 copies sold) with her sister Anne Berest. She has been living and breathing the world of Frida Kahlo for 20 years. Writing this book has set her free.
Frida parle haut et fort, avec son corps fracassé par un accident de bus et ses manières excessives d’inviter la muerte et la vida dans chacun de ses gestes. Elle jure comme un charretier, boit des trempées de tequila, et elle ne voit pas où est le problème. Elle aime les manifestations politiques, mettre des fleurs dans les cheveux, parler de sexe crûment, et les fêtes à réveiller les squelettes. Et elle peint.
Frida aime par-dessus tout Diego, le peintre le plus célèbre du Mexique, son crapaud insatiable, fatal séducteur, qui couvre les murs de fresques gigantesques.»