An imaginative work that brings the story of a little-known artist to vivid life.
Dunlap offers a historical novel loosely based on the life of French miniaturist painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, who forged a career even though the odds were against her.
This sweeping saga tells a story of a real-life 18th-century woman as she pursues her art against the backdrop of the French Revolution. Labille-Guiard was one of the first women to become a member of the Académie Royale and the first to set up a studio at the Louvre. Dunlap presents this trailblazer’s story, filling in historical gaps with fictionalized elements. The novel opens as Labille-Guiard makes the decision to leave her abusive husband and pursue painting—a career that always interested her but, because of sexist restrictions, eluded her. A shrewd businesswoman, she first paints anonymous erotic works that sell well and allow her to open her studio, and her career as a mainstream artist starts to take off. At the same time, a rival female artist, Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun, has caught the attention of the queen, Marie Antoinette, while general upheaval brews across the country. Dunlap’s expansive novel will have readers constantly guessing as to what’s true and what isn’t. Fortunately, the author does a fine job of clearing this up in an epilogue; for instance, she notes that there’s no proof that the artist created erotic works, but points out that they were a common way for artists of the era to survive. (Indeed, the minimal surviving information about Labille-Guiard allows for a great deal of creative license.) Still, the author manages to generate great tension, showing her subject to be stuck in the middle of the revolution, both literally and spiritually: “Adélaïde was caught between the structure of patronage that supported her career and her desire to embrace radical change.” In the end, the novel can be enjoyed as an intriguing gloss on history, but also as a sweet love story between her and her second husband, painter François-André Vincent, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at the intrigue of the era’s art world.
An imaginative work that brings the story of a little-known artist to vivid life.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-097-0
Page Count: 296
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.
In 16th-century Madrid, a crypto-Jew with a talent for casting spells tries to steer clear of the Inquisition.
Luzia Cotado, a scullion and an orphan, has secrets to keep: “It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates.” Also handed down are “refranes”—proverbs—in “not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish.” When Luzia sings the refranes, they take on power. “Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal” (“A change of scene, a change of fortune”) can mend a torn gown or turn burnt bread into a perfect loaf; “Quien no risica, no rosica” (“Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom”) can summon a riot of foliage in the depths of winter. The Inquisition hangs over the story like Chekhov’s famous gun on the wall. When Luzia’s employer catches her using magic, the ambitions of both mistress and servant catapult her into fame and danger. A new, even more ambitious patron instructs his supernatural servant, Guillén Santángel, to train Luzia for a magical contest. Santángel, not Luzia, is the familiar of the title; he has been tricked into trading his freedom and luck to his master’s family in exchange for something he no longer craves but can’t give up. The novel comes up against an issue common in fantasy fiction: Why don’t the characters just use their magic to solve all their problems? Bardugo has clearly given it some thought, but her solutions aren’t quite convincing, especially toward the end of the book. These small faults would be harder to forgive if she weren’t such a beautiful writer. Part fairy tale, part political thriller, part romance, the novel unfolds like a winter tree bursting into unnatural bloom in response to one of Luzia’s refranes, as she and Santángel learn about power, trust, betrayal, and love.
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884251
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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