Villa E

Alison’s (Nine Island) historical novel explores the intersecting careers of the real-life Irish designer Eileen Gray and Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier (called Le Grand in the novel). During the late 1920s, Eileen designs and builds a villa, now well known as Villa E-1027, on the southern coast of France. It was intended to be a retreat for her and her lover Bado (who’s inspired by the critic and editor Jean Badovici). Alison vividly depicts a critical meeting between Eileen and Le Grand wherein Le Grand recognizes his influence in the villa’s design, while Eileen is perhaps not as deferential as Le Grand desires. Thus begins their troubling relationship, marked by Le Grand’s obsession with the villa. When Eileen’s relationship with Bado dissolves, Bado assumes ownership of the house, though who truly owns Villa E is never fully resolved. Le Grand continues to visit the seaside home and, as history reveals, vandalizes it by painting several murals with sexual and sexist undertones on its modernist white walls. Alison’s sparse yet poetic prose beautifully depicts both exteriors (the villa and its Mediterranean setting) and interiors (the many emotions that Eileen and Le Grand experience over the span of decades).