The third book by Amend (Stations West, 2010, etc.) is a fast-paced, lively novel of forgery.
Gabriel Connois is the Spanish-born relation of a prominent contemporary of Degas. A talented but rather cranky, mercurial personality, he occupies what is beginning to seem a permanent spot at the impoverished margins of the Paris art world—an outsiderdom that's exacerbated by the limitations of his French and by his uncompromising attitude toward the bourgeois art world. Meanwhile, in New York, Elmira “Elm” Howells holds a prestigious place at her family's artauction house. Elm's marriage is a bit chilly, and her career is languishing, in part since the auction house is now headed by a rather imperious and skeptical cousin but mainly sinceshe's been absolutely unstrung by grief after the death (vacation, tsunami) of her young son Ronan. Early in the book, Gabriel—a gifted copyist and mimic who owes his start in the art world to his perfect replica of a painting by his famous forebear that hung in his childhood house—gets tempted, bit by bit, into a scheme that seems simultaneously to lay waste to and to fulfill his ambitions...and Elm, too, is swept into the conspiracy, at the other end, by her desperation to replace the son she lost. Amend provides a fizzy, entertaining insider's look at the conjunction of visual art and commerce—especially the world of art auctions—and though the portrait of Elm's family life and a subplot about cloning (human analog of forgery) are less convincing and strain credulity, they don't detract too much from the charm and enjoyment provided by Amend's exploration of the ethics and the mechanics of the art world.
A few preposterous plot points, but overall, this is a quick, provocative and likable read.Pub Date: April 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-385-53669-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
Categories: LITERARY FICTION
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When the newly elected Vice President’s life is threatened, the Secret Service runs to nomadic soldier-of-fortune Jack Reacher (Echo Burning, 2001, etc.) in this razor-sharp update of The Day of the Jackal and In the Line of Fire that’s begging to be filmed.
Why Reacher? Because M.E. Froelich, head of the VP’s protection team, was once a colleague and lover of his late brother Joe, who’d impressed her with tales of Jack’s derring-do as an Army MP. Now Froelich and her Brooks Brothers–tailored boss Stuyvesant have been receiving a series of anonymous messages threatening the life of North Dakota Senator/Vice President–elect Brook Armstrong. Since the threats may be coming from within the Secret Service’s own ranks—if they aren’t, it’s hard to see how they’ve been getting delivered—they can’t afford an internal investigation. Hence the call to Reacher, who wastes no time in hooking up with his old friend Frances Neagley, another Army vet turned private eye, first to see whether he can figure out a way to assassinate Armstrong, then to head off whoever else is trying. It’s Reacher’s matter-of-fact gift to think of everything, from the most likely position a sniper would assume at Armstrong’s Thanksgiving visit to a homeless shelter to the telltale punctuation of one of the threats, and to pluck helpers from the tiny cast who can fill the remaining gaps because they aren’t idiots or stooges. And it’s Child’s gift to keep tightening the screws, even when nothing’s happening except the arrival of a series of unsigned letters, and to convey a sense of the blank impossibility of guarding any public figure from danger day after highly exposed day, and the dedication and heroism of the agents who take on this daunting job.
Relentlessly suspenseful and unexpectedly timely: just the thing for Dick Cheney’s bedside reading wherever he’s keeping himself these days.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14861-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002
Categories: LITERARY FICTION
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