bookshelf

FAKE LIKE ME

Name: FAKE LIKE ME
Author: Barbara Bourland
ISBN: 978-1-5387-5951-6

by Barbara Bourland ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 2019

A haunting, dizzying meditation on identity and the blurred lines between life and art.

bookshelf

“The history of art is littered with the bodies of dead women.”

Artist Carey Logan made her name by creating hyper-realistic sculptures of bodies in various states of decay, including one memorable piece where body parts were buried, awaiting discovery. In 2008, Carey filled her rain boots with quick-drying cement and walked into a lake at an upstate New York property owned by her art collective, Pine City. Carey’s suicide “opened up the floodgates” for our unnamed narrator, a talented but struggling artist who had admired Carey since a brief but memorable encounter back when the narrator was an art student. In 2011, the pink-haired artist is 34, successful, and still living in an illegal New York loft that doubles as her studio. The series of large-scale paintings she’s spent the last two years working on—titled Humility, Obedience, Chastity, Modesty, Temperance, Purity, and Prudence—are scheduled to be shipped to Paris for a show, but they're all destroyed when the loft burns down. In desperation, the artist tells her gallerist that Prudence was the only casualty and is given a few months to fix it. She’s able to procure a space at Pine City and is allowed the use of Carey Logan’s old studio. The artist throws herself into her work and a passionate affair with Tyler Savage, who makes art out of black-market human organs and was Carey’s boyfriend. The other Pine City members are largely standoffish, and her burning questions about Carey and her rumored final work are decidedly unwelcome. The artist’s three months at the isolated compound are a menacing, swirling, hypnotic dance of parties, art, sex, and, ultimately, startling revelations. Bourland’s (I’ll Eat When I’m Dead, 2017) painstaking research on the practical and emotional aspects of making art is on vivid display. Readers eager for a glimpse into the New York art scene will be enthralled, but despite the glitz and glamour, it’s frequently a dehumanizing place to be, especially for women. After all, as the gallerist says: “Female painters are the bargain of the century.”

A haunting, dizzying meditation on identity and the blurred lines between life and art.

Pub Date: June 18, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5387-5951-6

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FORCE OF SUCH BEAUTY
by Barbara Bourland

- BOOK REVIEW
I'LL EAT WHEN I'M DEAD
by Barbara Bourland

bookshelf

BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

bookshelf

Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.