I liked this book way more than I ever expected to love a book about 19- and 20-year-old artists. Liked it very much, in fact.
Quite appropriately, it played out across the screen of my mind like a visually striking, thought-provoking, cleverly curated exhibition of fine art. To be fair, one of the principal characters in middle-aged, but the rest are very young. The book starts off with all of them at a prestigious art school – the older character as a visiting professor, the younger ones as a self-designated agent provocateur/enfant terrible, Preston, a small Louisiana town’s fish-out-or-water barely able to afford it Louisa, and the stunning/gifted/wealthy New Yorker, Karina. And then the book follows each of the four protagonists as they leave the university, each departure unplanned and premature for various reasons and try to…follow their artistic bliss and try to find their place in the world. Their lives are intertwined, tangentially or otherwise, interconnected in many ways, but each of their paths is unique – partially predetermined, like some many things in life, by their socioeconomic status, and partially by their individual and very different personalities. That divergent yet interwoven structure allows the author to explore the many layers of not just the art world but the world at large. The novel is set a decade back from the time of this review’s publication and thus right in the middle of the Occupy Wall Street and other well-meant failed social movements. The social consciousness was on a very high setting back then, but the art world’s mores and morals were always very much its own thing. The novel does a great job of juxtaposing the two and drawing parallels, especially for male characters who both get involved with the movements, albeit from different ends and for different reasons. There’s a love story too, just so you don’t think it’s all sociopolitical commentary. A proper novel offers many things to its readers, and this is very much a proper novel, a proper work of literature. The language sings. The characters come alive. So much so, you don’t even have to like them, and they’ll still manage to engage you. For how contrived and artificial the art scene is, at large and in New York specifically, the novel is strikingly emotionally sincere and poignant. Great read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2023
Categories |