A vivid but messy adventure surrounding a young impressionist.
A debut historical novel summons the art world of 19th-century Paris.
Who could have guessed that René Bernard, the son of an oysterman, would become one of the most legendary painters of the impressionist era? A childhood illness provides the opportunity to escape the family business and instead attend art school in Lyon. From there, René goes to Paris, like all the painters of his generation, to make a name for himself amid the squalor and brilliance of the city’s bohemian arts community. It is in Paris that he first lays eyes on the Flower Girl, a woman of beauty and intrigue who immediately steals his heart: “This young girl had hair of long beautiful brown curls that fell from her head and surrounded her shoulders. Her skin was as clear and unblemished as a newborn baby.” René sets out to court the Flower Girl—whose true identity is unknown—and make her his muse, though in this he is challenged by the Critic, a bane to artists everywhere who is also shrouded in mystery. Soldiers, ladies, and a trained lion round out the cast of characters of René’s colorful milieu. In a time when art can make a man famous or destroy his life, this budding painter must determine what cost he is willing to pay for immortality. MacDougall writes in a stylistic prose that brings René’s Paris to life with gritty detail: “She had a bit of a purse but dressed in rags. Tongues had come to Paris to blend in and make a life for herself, whatever that might mean. She took a room in the least expensive district, living with an alcoholic woman, and her lover, another alcoholic woman.” René’s paintings (actually created by the author, an artist) possess a certain folksy charm, but they don’t look like anything that would have been executed by a renowned impressionist. In addition, MacDougall unfortunately invests in the intricacies of his plot rather than the development of his characters: Numerous pseudonyms and hidden backstories obscure these figures, and the eventual reveals are not particularly satisfying. Ambitious and occasionally inventive, this sprawling novel never quite achieves the level of intrigue it seeks.
A vivid but messy adventure surrounding a young impressionist.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5470-7139-5
Page Count: 358
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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