Gabriele - by Anne Berest & Claire Berest (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A May 2025 Indie Next List Great Read

"Gabriële is a revealing, heartrending biographical novel about a complicated woman whose imprint on art history is undeniable."--Foreword Reviews

The story of a passionate love affair that triggered a revolution.

An atmospheric, exuberant novel from the best-selling author of The Postcard, Anne Berest, and her sister, Claire Berest, about love and sex, art and revolution, experimentation and creativity, and three young people who changed the world.

The year is 1908, the height of the Belle Époque, and a brilliant, young French woman named Gabriële, newly graduated from the most elite music school in Europe, meets a volcanic Spanish artist named Francis. Following a whirlwind romance, they marry and fall headlong into a Paris that is experimenting with new forms of living, thinking, and creating. Soon after marrying Francis, Gabriële meets Marcel, another young artist, five years her junior. Soon, Francis, Marcel, and Gabriële are all involved in a fervent affair that will change the course of art history and redefine the avant-garde.

As the Belle Epoque gives way to rebellion and revolution, and the world descends into the devastation of World War I, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Gabriële Buffet revolutionize art and open up new ways of seeing and thinking, along the way posing a vital question for their age and ours: what is the connection between new ways loving and new ways of creating?

Moving between Paris, New York, Berlin, Zurich, Barcelona, London, and Saint-Tropez, Gabriële is as audacious, uninhibited, intimate, and unforgettable as its central character, the mercurial, pioneering Gabriële Buffet.

Review Quotes

Praise for Gabriële 

"Like Gabriële herself, this book takes on big ideas about modern art and modern life--without losing sight of the people caught and crushed in those turning gears."--The New York Times

"A loving tribute to an important figure of the avant garde art movement who was nearly forgotten to history."--TIME Magazine, A Best Book of April 2025

"Gabriële is a revealing, heartrending biographical novel about a complicated woman whose imprint on art history is undeniable."--Foreword Reviews

"The Berest sisters follow up Anne's The Postcard with a colorful portrait of their great-grandmother Gabriële Buffet-Picabia. With lyrical prose, the Berests blend historical context with more intimate insights, such as their attempt to understand why the Picabias were cold to their children. Readers with an affinity for early 20th-century art will especially enjoy this."--Publishers Weekly

"Gabriele would have been a wonderful person to know. Reading this book is the next best thing. Muse to the makers of the modern art movement, brilliant musician in her own right, epic mother figure to a manic menagerie of creative intellects, Gabriele Buffet was one of a kind. This loving portrait of a wild time in the art world reveals a fascinating family history by two sisters delving deep into their familial past."--Reading the West

"An atmospheric excavation of an unusual woman and marriage, both intriguing and remote."--Kirkus Reviews

"Sensitive, refined, intelligent... An unmitigated success."--Les Inrockuptibles

"Wonderful! Two sisters, both novelists, have brought Gabriële Buffet back to life, their words intertwining with luminous tenderness in this finely crafted novel."--L'Obs

"Gabriële is at once a beautiful epic, an intimate family saga, and a meticulous investigation...It tells the story of a turbulent time when everything seemed possible and the story of inherited pain and long-hidden family tragedies."--Le Parisien (Week-End) 

"Gabriele was a powerful woman who has been kept in the shadows of history. It is time to bring her back into the light, and Anne and Claire Berest have done just that in this beautiful and radiant book."--L'Express

"Thanks to Anne and Claire Berest's gracefully crafted novel, Gabriële is finally taking her first steps toward posterity/eternity."--Le Point 

"A captivating subject such as this, and personalities such as these, demand care, and that this precisely what the authors have shown them through their meticulous research and beautifully crafted novel...Gabriële is also a chronicle of one of the essential moments of what we now call the avant-gardes."--Le Monde des Livres