Maestra

Maestra

by L. S. Hilton
Maestra

Maestra

by L. S. Hilton

Paperback

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Overview

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND THE PERFECT READ FOR FANS OF KILLING EVE

THE BEST OF SKIMM READS 2016

“One of this year’s most talked about novels.” —The Washington Post

“A twenty-first-century femme fatale as lethal as Tom Ripley and as seductive as Bacall.” —Vogue 

A put-upon assistant at a prestigious London art house, Judith Rashleigh is well-educated, well-groomed, and impeccably behaved—keeping the darker desires she indulges on nights off as her own little secret. But when Judith uncovers a dangerous heist, her life is shattered and she’s forced to run. Armed with just her wits and a talent for self-invention, she makes her way from the French Riviera to Geneva, Rome, and the nightclubs of Paris, determined to take back what is rightfully hers.

The beginning of a darkly irresistible trilogy, Maestra follows the rise of Judith, a woman whose vulnerability and ruthlessness have left readers worldwide begging to know: where do you go when you've gone too far?

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780399184277
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date: 04/04/2017
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 316,862
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

L. S. Hilton is the author of the New York Times and internally bestselling novel Maestra and Domina. She grew up in England and has lived in Key West, New York City, Paris, and Milan. After graduating from Oxford, she studied art history in Paris and Florence. Hilton has worked as a journalist, art critic, and broadcaster, and is presently based in London.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One
(Continues…)



Excerpted from "Maestra"
by .
Copyright © 2017 L.S. Hilton.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Reading Group Guide

1. Discuss Judith’s childhood. How does her background shape her character?
2. At one point Judith reflects that “wealth creeps under your epidermis like poison. It invades your posture, your gestures, the way you carry yourself” (p. 112). Does wealth change Judith? Would she be different if she had been born rich? How does the novel portray people born into wealth?
3. Do you like Judith? Why or why not? What surprised you the most about her character?
4. Judith is never described physically in the novel. Why do you think this is? How do you picture her?
5. In the beginning of the novel Judith reveals, “Rage had always been my friend . . . Rage had kept my back straight; rage had seen me through the fights and the slights” (p. 64). At what points in the novel does Judith turn to rage? How does rage shape Judith’s decisions? Can you relate to her frustrations? Why or why not?
6. What does Renaud’s relationship with Judith reveal about her character? Did you guess where their relationship was going?
7. Discuss the portrayal of sex in the novel. How does Judith’s sexuality inform your understanding of her character? Would you react differently to the sex scenes if Judith were a man? Why or why not?
8. Judith is a woman who decides unapologetically to own herself—her body, her desires, her ambitions. In what ways does her character challenge conventional expectations for women? How did you feel reading her transgressive behavior? Is Maestra a feminist novel?
9. Judith relates to other women in a variety of ways throughout the novel. Were you shocked by how some of those relationships develop over the course of the novel?
10. On page 160, Judith tells us, “Later, I had a lot of time to think about when I’d made the decision. Had it been swelling inside me all along, waiting, like a tumor?” Was there one moment in the novel in which you saw her character change? If so, when? If not, why?

Interviews

Sex, Murder, Shoes

Female transgression has a consistent theme in literature. From Troilus and Criseyde through Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina to London Fields, it's a constant that The Woman Always Pays. Perhaps Becky Sharpe, my favourite heroine of all, might be said to get away with breaking the rules, but then all she has to show for a lifetime's scheming at the end of Vanity Fair is a pot of rouge and the brandy bottle. When I started to write my heroine in Maestra, Judith Rashleigh, I was interested in what would happen if a woman was allowed to be bad not because she is an avenging angel a la Lisbeth Salander, not because she is bitter or traumatised, but because- well, because she can. No one ever asks James Bond about his emotions. It turned out that Judith is capable of being very bad indeed.

Maestra also addresses another key question, which is why sociopaths always have to be badly dressed. Coming from a background as an historical biographer, the novel was a joyful experience for me, and I wanted to convey some of the aspirational escapism that I had thrilled to when reading books such as Shirley Conran's Lace as a teenager. As Judith moves closer to her goals, the locations, and the clothes, become increasingly glamorous. But I dislike the gendered categorization of fiction, and my aim was also to engage male readers with its plot (it has boats, and oligarchs, and guns!). Judith might not be an ideal role model, but Maestra is very much a book about pleasure, sensual and aesthetic. I hope it will prove as much fun to read as it was to write.

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