Feel the mud squash between your toes, see and taste the Italian meal served on the lake, hear a great stag roar, feast your eyes on George Sand's beautiful clothes (and smell her sickroom). Clever observations of women, girls, and passionate thwarted love, these stories provide novel insights into familiar, and new fictional characters, but it's the sensual images that have remained with me.
Pink napkin spread over her lap, bottle of white wine chilling in the ice bucket, platter of seafood and fish between them. Crisp golden rings of deep-fried squid. Salt and oil and lemon on her tongue. Sips of icy white wine. Mounds of crab cupped by a reddish radiccio leaf. Coral, scarlet and cream flesh on a dark blue china plate on a pink tablecloth.