ANDROMEDA GRAPHIKA
ANDROMEDA GRAPHIKA
A Pygmalionesque transformation, but in reverse: from woman into work of art.
A contemporary literary novel, now available
Cover Art
Front Jacket
Front Cover
Back Jacket
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The Story
Freelance journalist Andromeda Chamberlain is offered an assignment: find out what became of a teenage runaway, Margot Vaughn, ten years after the girl went missing. The offer is made not by an editor but a lawyer, one whose client’s identity remains confidential. The terms, although generous, come with some strange conditions, including the requirement that she wear a Tiffany collar for the duration of the assignment.
Andromeda discovers that soon after leaving home Margot appeared in an obscure French art-house film, a reenactment of the Dionysian rites as depicted on the walls of the Villa dei Misteri in Pompeii, and the result was a movie as vivid as the murals that inspired them. The trail leads to LA and the Mulholland Drive mansion of the distributor, then the production offices in Paris and the Loire Valley château that was used as the setting for the film.
The key to uncovering what became of Margot Vaughn lies with the film’s director, Orlando Gidding, notoriously demanding and megalomaniacal, unknown at the time of Margot’s movie but now famous—or infamous, depending on your point of view. He is currently holed up in his lair in Venice, completing the editing of his latest movie, a film based on the Faust legend and by far the most ambitious and costly of his works. Gidding is about to enter it into competition at Cannes, and he has no intention of allowing Andromeda’s discovery that he once made a graphic film with an underage star to spoil his chances.
The conflict comes to a head among the ruins of Rothermore Abbey, located on a rocky crag off the coast of Scotland, and the Gothic setting of Gidding’s Faust.
A novel of transformation, Andromeda Graphika tells the tale of a woman’s metamorphosis: part dark ritual; part depraved rite; part dreamlike revelation.
“psychologically rich tale of erotic and philosophical enigmas“
“a mashup of the John Fowles novel THE MAGUS and Stanley Kubrick’s film EYES WIDE SHUT, replete with swanky furnishings, ruminations on art…The author’s canny prose finds sharp, inchoate conflict in the most innocuous situations…atmospheric and psychologically rich tale of erotic and philosophical enigmas”
KIRKUS REVIEWS
“Brace’s globetrotting mystery twines suspense, elegance, and the turn-ons of the global elite…Stylish and polished, Brace’s literary thriller abounds in evocative description, crisp and engaging dialogue…A sense of playful unease suffuses the novel, as Brace toys with expectations”
BOOKLIFE REVIEWS
Hardcover, 344 pages