LUSH LIVES

A tale of romance and intrigue in the New York art world by art history professor and debut novelist Lyon.

Queer, Black artist Glory Hopkins does not know why her great-aunt Lucille bequeathed her Harlem brownstone and all its possessions to her, but she willingly takes on the responsibility along with the new place to live and paint. When she brings a box of Lucille’s things to Cuthbert’s, a small but prestigious New York auction house, she meets tall, curvy redhead Parkie de Groot, who walks with a cane. Their attraction is instant and mutual, but they get off to a rocky start when Parkie doesn’t take Lucille’s items as seriously as Glory would like. This begins a pattern of Parkie not living up to Glory’s standards. The major example: Parkie is in charge of an auction for an estate with a history of nasty exploitation (think Sackler but older money). Then again, Glory fails to disclose that she is up for representation by a blue-chip gallery that Parkie knows, firsthand, to have less than perfect morals. Meanwhile, a British powerhouse of Indian descent named Manya Shah has arrived to take the city’s art scene by storm, represent Glory, and, if she has it her way, sleep with Glory, or Parkie, or both. And while all that is going on, a scrapbook of Lucille’s may contain a lost manuscript of a Harlem luminary, unlocking fascinating secrets of Glory’s great-aunt and promising a windfall (if the increasingly evil Madeline Cuthbert doesn’t interfere). Lyon is clearly invested in illuminating the interior lives of her characters and showing how intersectionality is everywhere. Though the braided plotlines drive the characters’ individual transformations, the book seems to shuttle between quiet moments of reflection, inside-baseball art world workings, and melodramatic events without quite finding balance.

Like many of the not-quite sex scenes therein, this novel is both fun and frustrating.