LORDE NATASHA LESTER

THIS GLOBALLY FAMOUS KIWI ARTIST STEPS INTO THE LIGHT WITH HER NEW ALBUM THE WRITER’S LATEST READ WILL TRANSPORT YOU TO THE GLAMOROUS SHORES OF THE FRENCH RIVIERA

It’s hard to believe that it’s been eight years since a then-teenage Ella Yelich-O’Connor burst onto the music scene with her smash-hit track ‘Royals’. Now 24, Lorde, as she’s better known, has just released her third album, Solar Power, following on from 2013’s Pure Heroine and 2017’s Melodrama.

The artist recently told Apple Music that the joy of being outside inspired much of Solar Power’s summery, chilled-out vibe. “I was very much raised outdoors, by the beach, in the ocean and outside,” she said. “But it wasn’t until I got my dog that I understood how precious the natural world is.” Sadly, the death of her dog Pearl delayed the completion of the album with her co-producer Jack Antono . But ultimately, despite that personal trauma, Lorde told The Guardian the album

“is about how precious life is and also that feeling [of being in] nature and the clothes coming o , the skin being exposed and feeling this playfulness.”

That is re ected in Solar Power’s cover art.“When I rst saw it, I was like ooh!” she told The Guardian. “But it also felt innocent and free, a little feral, a little spicy.”

It’s about as wild as things get for Lorde, who lives quietly in Auckland and shuns social media

– all while still being at the top of her game as Solar Power proves. (Out now)

For her latest novel, Aussie author Natasha Lester spent a few glorious weeks travelling around the South of France to find the perfect setting in the French Riviera. “I stayed in a villa that Francis Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald used to own,” the historical fiction writer tells WHO. “It had a creaking cage elevator and the decor was so 1920s. I was totally in the spirit of the past while I was there.”

In The Riviera House, Lester tells the story of Remy, a modern woman who was adopted as an infant but left a mysterious mansion on the French coast by her birth parents. Following a tragedy, she goes to the villa to

recuperate and comes across a mystery involving a painting that was stolen by the Nazis during World War II.

As Remy looks into her family’s connection with the artwork, she uncovers the story of a student, Éliane, who worked at the Louvre until the German forces took over Paris. As Adolf Hitler goes about rounding up valuable pieces from the country’s museum and the collections of wealthy Jewish citizens, Éliane vows to stop him. She soon finds herself working alongside real-life war hero Rose Valland in the French Resistance.

“The more I dug into Rose’s story, the more I thought I

have to write about her,” Lester says. “We’ve all heard stories about the heroic acts of the French Resistance, like saving pilots and Jewish people. But Rose was risking her life for art and I think a lot of people wonder why she was willing to take such a risk,” she explains.

Lester believes that after the pandemic, more of us can relate to Rose. “This past year, we’ve all experienced that there are things that keep us going when it seems impossible and things we miss terribly when they are gone,” she explains. “Art is one of those precious things.” (Out now)