Simon van Booy

Simon van Booy, author of the award-winning “Love Begins in Winter” and “The Secret Lives of People in Love,” will be at Darien Library on Tuesday, July 19th at 7 p.m.

Mr. van Booy will be speaking about his newest book, Everything Beautiful Began After, a stunning debut novel of love amidst the ruins of Athens.

He is, without doubt, one of the best storytellers I've ever heard speak. Be prepared to be rapt.

(From the Publisher – about Everything Beautiful Began After)

Young, beautiful, and lost, Rebecca has come to Athens to abandon herself to the city’s strangeness and heat on a campaign to learn about love. Deserted by her mother and brought up by her grandfather in the south of France, she has never had an anchor to keep her from feeling constantly adrift.
George has come to Athens to translate. It’s all he knows how to do. Dropped off at a New England boarding school when he was a child, his closest friends are Aristophanes and Jack Daniels, Euripides and Jim Beam.
Henry has come to Athens to dig. An archaeologist, he spends his days on-site in Athens, and roams the Agora on the weekends. Henry comes from a happy, humdrum Welsh family. Nothing has really ever happened to him.
After a chance meeting on a hot Athens day, however, and George and Rebecca begin a conversation…that turns into drinks…then a few dinners...
Until Rebecca meets Henry.
And Henry meets George.
And Athens changes their lives forever.

“Van Booy's stories are somehow like paintings the characters walk out of, and keep walking.” -- Los Angeles Times

“His sentences are spare, subtle, and freighted, his images fresh . . . you see and feel his settings . . . a first-rate storyteller.” – Newsday

Simon van Booy’s appearance at Darien Library is part of our Adult Summer Reading Program.

A reception and book signing will follow the author’s presentation. Books will be available for purchase.

Additional parking for evening and weekend Library programs on Thorndal Circle (behind Nielsen’s).