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A novel by Liza Nelson
“Playing Botticelli”
“One of those wonderful novels that treat the mother-daughter relationship for what it is: part mine field, part love nest.” Pat Conroy
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About Liza
Jack-of-all writing trades Liza Nelson, author of the novel PLAYING BOTTICELLI, has been an essayist, editor, journalist, columnist, dramaturge, and poet. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of publications, from the underground paper The Great Speckled Bird to Ploughshares to The N.Y. Times. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her poetry and a James Beard Award for her food writing in A Book of Feasts. Years ago she reluctantly moved with her family to a Georgia cattle farm that she’s grown to love, although it no longer raises anything but mosquitoes, wild flowers and the occasional tomato. Her blog www.aliceinmemoryland.com chronicles her experiences with Alzheimer’s and marriage.
A LITTLE ABOUT “PLAYING BOTTICELLI”
In 1986, Godiva Blue thinks she controls the world she has created for her daughter Dylan and herself in a neglected corner of North Florida. While her fellow 1960s college activists have become Reagan-era yuppies, Godiva—an avowed nonconformist and self-proclaimed avant-garde artist who is also an elementary school janitor—refuses to compromise her ideals. Then one day she glances at the wanted posters hanging in her local post office and recognizes the face of a man she hasn’t seen since 1969: Dylan’s father. Shaken, Godiva brings the poster home. Soon enough, 15-year-old Dylan finds it. Fueled by simmering adolescent resentment and already secretly chafing against her mother’s out-sized personality, Dylan sets out across America to look for the father she’s never known. Left behind and powerless to protect her daughter, Godiva must confront the choices she’s made. By turns funny, scary and reflective, Playing Botticelli follows Godiva and Dylan deep into the uncharted between autonomy and family love.
How the story begins for Godiva
“Well, this summer is over. Kaput. Finis. Down the tubes. Extinct. All gone. The end. As far as I’m concerned anyway. It shut like a book this afternoon. One minute I was full of August, easing my way down Highway 12, windows down, music blasting, the hot wind whipping in thick ribbons against my neck. The next minute I was chilled to the bone. To the bone.”
How the story begins for Dylan
“… Dylan takes her time. Crease by crease, she unfolds the fragile paper speckled with water and grease stains. Not until she has smoothed the page against her thigh and shaken it gently does she let herself look at what she is holding. Her father’s face in the palm of her hand. Though she’s never seen him before, she knows. He stares up at her, and she stares back.”
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