New in paperback! After a failed escape attempt, the princess of a tiny kingdom begins to reevaluate her life.
Caroline, a former marathon runner who dropped out of school at fourteen to pursue an Olympic medal, was the perfect candidate for a tiara: shapely, disciplined, accustomed to public attention, and utterly uneducated. When she meets Finn, the handsome prince of a small European kingdom, her fate is sealed. With a collar of pearls locked around her throat, and a rope of diamonds leashing her to a balcony, Caroline uses her once-powerful body to smile, wave, and produce children with perfect grace.
But as she begins to open her eyes to the world around her - and examine her own reflection - Caroline discovers that she may have entered a bargain that cannot be undone.
Barbara Bourland's stunning third novel is her softest, strangest book to date. Inspired by the alleged escape attempts of real-life princesses, and set in a grotesque and gaudy pre-recession 2000s Europe, The Force of Such Beauty is a heart-wrenching and compulsively readable testament to the way in which real-life power structures around the world ultimately rest on the subjugation of women's bodies.
By Barbara Bourland. Paperback. 400 pages. Published by Dutton, 2023.