11 h 53 minAudiobook10 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if your child’s greatest gift leaves no room for a life of your own?
In The Devourers: A Novel, Annie Vivanti follows mothers and gifted children across generations. Poetry and music bring intensity to their bonds, while artistic ambition presses into family life. A child’s talent offers a source of pride, but nurturing it asks something difficult of the mother whose own hopes also matter.
Vivanti places women’s artistic ambitions beside the expectations of motherhood. Her mothers can love their children deeply and still feel the cost of serving their futures. The conflict unfolds through intimate relationships: how much must a mother surrender, and where can her own desires find room when another person’s gift demands so much?
What you’ll discover
- Love without easy answers Explore maternal devotion that holds genuine pride and painful personal cost at the same time.
- Talent inside family life See how poetry and music intensify the bond between mothers and their gifted children.
- Ambitions that compete Encounter women whose own hopes must contend with the demands placed on mothers.
- Bonds across generations Follow a family conflict that reaches beyond one mother and one gifted child.
- A troubling central question Consider when nurturing another person’s promise begins to consume the life that sustains it.
Who will love it
Readers who love family sagas, sharp-tongued social comedy, music and poetry, and stories about mothers and daughters, art and sacrifice. It suits anyone who enjoys travel through old Europe and a heroine who feels everything deeply.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A baby takes over the Grey House
- A widow, a hat and a forgotten baby
- Nancy, the poems and the German poets
- The cough, the grandfather and the lost child
- Nino, Villari and the great passion
- Fame, flattery and two suitors
- A marriage built on a handsome profile
- Monte Carlo, New York and Mrs Doyle
- Eve, the Unknown and the Ogre
- What the book is really about
Who’s who
- NancyA dreamy, gifted child who becomes an Italian poet and longs to write a great book.
- ValeriaNancy's young Italian mother, widowed early, who pours every fear and hope into protecting her child.
- Edith AvoryTom's youngest sister, a fair English girl who loves Nancy dearly and is weakened by the family illness.
- Aldo della RoccaA beautiful, idle Neapolitan who marries Nancy and looks for easy money, thrifty in small things and reckless in large ones.
- Nino TirindelliValeria's cousin, charming and easily led, who loves one woman after another and is tied by pity to an older actress.
- Fräulein MüllerThe German governess who reads poetry to Nancy and later gives her whole heart to Anne-Marie.
- Anne-MarieNancy's daughter, a plain-spoken child who plays the violin like an artist and draws crowds across Europe.
- The OgreA gruff English mine owner who writes to Nancy as the Unknown and offers her a steady, protective love.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
- On your phone, tablet, computer or Kindle, with the type as large as you like.
- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 11 h 53 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 10 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Los devoradores: una novela in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Los devoradores: una novela
by Annie Vivanti · 1910
A poet's child grows into a violin prodigy while everyone who loves them is gradually consumed.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Devourers is a novel by Annie Vivanti, who wrote in English and Italian and died in 1942. It follows three generations of women in one family, from a nursery in Hertfordshire to concert halls across Europe.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A baby takes over the Grey House
The novel opens in the Grey House in Hertfordshire. Edith Avory, a small girl in braids, runs home from a party to meet her new niece. She expects a baby with yellow hair and a blue bow. She finds a red-faced infant with black hair, a stern nurse named Wilson, and a young mother in black.
The mother is Valeria, an Italian girl whose English husband, Tom, has just died. Edith must give up her own room, because the baby needs it. A gardener's joke about her nose being out of joint sends her running to ask the gardener's boy, Jim Brown, what is wrong with it.
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What is The Devourers about?
It follows Nancy, a gifted girl who becomes a famous poet, and then her daughter Anne-Marie, a violin prodigy. It shows how those who love genius give up their own lives to feed it, across England, Italy, America and Bohemia.
What does the title The Devourers mean?
The Devourers are people of genius who unknowingly take everything from those around them. The Devoured are the mothers, friends and helpers who give up their own plans for the gifted child. The book shows both sides.
Who are Nancy and Anne-Marie?
Nancy is the daughter of an English painter and an Italian mother, known first as a child poet. Anne-Marie is Nancy's daughter, who grows into a violin prodigy and gives concerts for kings and crowds.
The author
Annie Vivanti
1866–1942 · Italian poet and novelist
Annie Vivanti (1866–1942) was an Italian poet and novelist born in London. She wrote in Italian and English and lived in Britain, Italy, and the United States. Her poetry collection Lirica appeared in 1890, and her English-language novel The Devourers appeared in 1910. She died in Turin.
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