CHERUB TROUBLE

The peculiarities and difficulties of an artist’s life unfold in Whipple’s droll novel.

Rudy, a painterin his mid-30s, has burned his bridges in the New York City art world and moved toa coastal Florida community, conceived as a result of a 1920s land grab by Charles Bensen, “by most accounts an ignorant lout with a nominal flair for business.” Although Bensen went bankrupt during the Depression, the art museum he started, the Bensen Museum, is the locus of the present-day community cultural scene of wealthy retirees in condos on the area’s barrier islands. Rudy discovers that “there was good money to be made painting faux finishes and cheesy seascape murals in ultra-expensive waterfront homes,” but he yearns to be known for his own paintings, “which reflected my soul and passion and were hence unsellable.” In a single weekend, he’s inundated with painting emergencies (including fixing a mural that was “trashed” by a caterer’s table) and caught up in intrigues involving the local arts community; he also discovers a secret about paintings attributed to two famous, long-dead local artists, visits his father, and solidifies his romance with on-and-off girlfriend, Linda. He doesn’t sleep, however, and the resulting sleep deprivation leads to hallucinations involving images of lascivious cherubs on the ceiling of a hidden room in the Bensen Museum. Whipple’s vivid descriptions may send readers racing for pigment-color charts. Skin colors include “burnt umber,” “raw sienna,” and “light-yellow ochre,” the accounts of Rudy’s marbleizing and painting techniques are detailed enough for a master class: “I mixed a glaze of alizarin crimson and a touch of raw umber in an empty mayonnaise jar.” Sharp, wickedly humorous characterizations, such as “She had a face-lift that made her look like an astronaut during a launch,” coupled with absurd Florida-centric situations, are reminiscent of the works of Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey.

A rollicking, satirical take on fine art and the Sunshine State.