Coco and Igor - Tapa blanda

From the ephemeral liaison of the milliner and the musician, Greenhalgh has elicited a fine, entrancingly poetic novel (Peter Conrad, Observer)

Chris Greenhalgh brilliantly conveys the atmosphere of tension and sultry passion (Sunday Telegraph)

Impressively realised (Guardian)

Greenhalgh writes convincingly, often sympathetically, about the sensual excitement that briefly unites the pair (Sunday Times)

An intense account of the brief, electric affair between Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky...Period detail drips off the pages (Sydney Morning Herald)

1913. Diaghilev's Ballets Russes premieres Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' in Paris. The infamous first-night proves to be an electric experience for one member of the audience, the young couturiere Coco Chanel. When she and Stravinsky meet in 1920, both sense a charge, and the exiled composer hesitates over whether to accept the wealthy designer's offer to bring his family to summer at her villa. The Stravinsky entourage - ailing wife Catherine, and four children - arrive, and the composer enjoys a new burst of creative activity. Chanel, meanwhile, is hatching her plan to launch her classic fragrance, No.5. Soon she and her guest embark upon an affair which touches both deeply, but is complicated by their rigid devotion to their work, and Stravinsky's commitment to his family. As Catherine, now confined to her bed, comes to suspect what is happening around her, the two lovers must consider the depth of their feelings, and whether, with the autumn drawing in, theirs is a relationship that can survive.