The Red Lily

Thérèse has everything Parisian society can offer, a politician husband who barely notices her, a salon full of brilliant talkers, a discreet lover kept out of boredom more than passion. Then, in Florence among the lilies and old stones, she meets the sculptor Jacques Dechartre, and for the first time in her elegant, arranged life, love arrives as force rather than pastime. The trouble is that real love, unlike the society kind, cannot bear the existence of a past.

Anatole France (later a Nobel laureate) wrote The Red Lily as both a rapturous love story and a coolly observed autopsy of one: the conversations glitter, Florence glows, and underneath it all jealousy tightens notch by notch. It is a novel about the exact moment happiness begins to destroy itself, told by one of French literature's great ironists. Sensuous, worldly, and quietly merciless.

At roughly 75,700 words, The Red Lily runs about 8½ hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

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