art in fiction

 

The next Genre Reading Group Meeting will be Tuesday, March 30th on Zoom at 6:30pm and the topic up for discussion is illness and disease. Register your email to receive a link to the meeting on that day: https://emmetoneal.libnet.info/event/4597967

There is a small display at the 2nd floor service desk and all of those books are on the GRG digital shelf under shelf care here: https://oneallibrary.org/adults---reading-recommendations

This week, GRG met to talk about art as portrayed in fiction!

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

Moving, intimate, and beautifully written, The Beekeeper of Aleppo is a book for our times: a novel that at once reminds us that the most peaceful and ordinary lives can be utterly upended in unimaginable ways and brings a journey in faraway lands close to home, never to be forgotten.

The All Souls series by Deborah Harkness

A Discovery of Witches
Shadows of Night
The Book of Life
Time’s Convert

Deborah Harkness's sparkling debut, A Discovery of Witches, brought her into the spotlight and galvanized fans around the world. In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont. Look for the hit TV series “A Discovery of Witches,” streaming on AMC Plus, Sundance Now, and Shudder.

Mr. Mac and Me by Esther Freud

In this story of an unlikely friendship, Esther Freud paints a vivid portrait of the home front during World War I, and of a man who was one of the most brilliant and misunderstood artists of his generation.

The Amber Room by Steve Berry

Atlanta judge Rachel Cutler loves her job and her kids, but her life takes a dark turn when her father dies under strange circumstances, leaving behind clues to a secret about one of the greatest treasures ever made by man. Forged of the exquisite gem, the Amber Room inexplicably disappeared sometime during World War II. Determined to solve its mysteries, Rachel takes off for Germany with her ex-husband, Paul, close behind. Before long, they’re in over their heads. Locked into a treacherous game with professional killers, Rachel and Paul find themselves on a collision course with the forces of greed, power, and history itself.

The Swan Thieves by Elisabeth Kostova

Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.

Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland

With her richly textured novels, Susan Vreeland has offered pioneering portraits of artists' lives.  As she did in Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Vreeland focuses on a single painting, Auguste Renoir's instantly recognizable masterpiece, which depicts a gathering of Renoir's real friends enjoying a summer Sunday on a café terrace along the Seine. Narrated by Renoir and seven of the models, the novel illuminates the gusto, hedonism, and art of the era. With a gorgeous palette of vibrant, captivating characters, Vreeland paints their lives, loves, losses, and triumphs so vividly that "the painting literally comes alive" (The Boston Globe).

Richard Temple by Patrick O’Brian

Richard Temple escapes from a blighted childhood and his widowed, alcoholic mother thanks to an artistic gift, which is the one thing of value he has to his name. His life as a painter in London of the 1930s is cruelly deprived. In order to eat, he squanders his one asset by becoming a forger of art, specializing in minor works by Utrillo. He is rescued by the love of a beautiful and wealthy woman, and it is the failure of this relationship, coupled with the outbreak of war, that propels him into the world of espionage.

Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore

Absolutely nothing is sacred to Christopher Moore. The phenomenally popular, New York Times bestselling satirist whom the Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls, “Stephen King with a whoopee cushion and a double-espresso imagination” has already lampooned Shakespeare, San Francisco vampires, marine biologists, Death…even Jesus Christ and Santa Claus! Now, in his latest masterpiece, Sacré Bleu, the immortal Moore takes on the Great French Masters. A magnificent “Comedy d’Art” from the author of Lamb, Fool, and Bite Me, Moore’s Sacré Bleu is part mystery, part history (sort of), part love story, and wholly hilarious as it follows a young baker-painter as he joins the dapper  Henri Toulouse-Lautrec on a quest to unravel the mystery behind the supposed “suicide” of Vincent van Gogh.

The Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva

Gabriel Allon is spy AND an Italian art restorer and he adventures along through 21 books and counting!  The first in the series is The Kill Artist.

Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him by Danielle Ganek

As The Devil Wears Prada demystified the world of high fashion, this funny and insightful debut novel dishes the crazy and captivating Manhattan art scene. When painter Jeffrey Finelli is run over by a cab, the art world clamors for the instantly in-demand work by the late “emerging artist”—especially an enormous painting called Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him.

The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

First published in 1919, W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Moon and Sixpence” is an episodic first person narrative based on the life of Paul Gaugin. At the center of the novel is the story of Charles Strickland, an English banker who walks away from a life of privilege, abruptly abandoning his wife and children, in order to pursue his passion to become an artist. Strickland leaves London for Paris and ultimately Tahiti, mirroring the life of Gaugin who would also split with his wife to pursue a life of painting eventually immigrating to Tahiti. “The Moon and Sixpence” is the story of the demands that can be placed on a tortured artistic soul and consequently the lives that it touches. 

The God of Spring by Arabella Edge

A tale inspired by the life of early nineteenth-century Romantic painter Théodore Géricault traces the creation of one of his most controversial and sensational works, Raft of the Medusa, a process during which he makes the two survivors of an infamous French frigate his muses. 

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Hitler’s Holy Relics: A True Story of Nazi Plunder and the Race to Recover the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire by Sidney Kirkpatrick

Drawing on unpublished interrogation and  intelligence reports, as well as on diaries, letters,  journals, and interviews in the United States and Germany, Kirkpatrick tells this riveting and disturbing story with cinematic detail and reveals— for the first time—how a failed Vienna art student, obsessed with the occult and dreams of his own grandeur, nearly succeeded in creating a Holy Reich rooted in a twisted reinvention of medieval and Church history.

Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay

Discover the tantalizing true stories behind your favorite colors. For example: Cleopatra used saffron—a source of the color yellow—for seduction. Extracted from an Afghan mine, the blue “ultramarine” paint used by Michelangelo was so expensive he couldn’t afford to buy it himself. Since ancient times, carmine red—still found in lipsticks and Cherry Coke today—has come from the blood of insects.

Jewels: A Secret History by Victoria Finlay

Jewels is a unique and often exhilarating voyage through history, across cultures, deep into the earth’s mantle, and up to the glittering heights of fame, power, and wealth. From the fabled curse of the Hope Diamond, to the disturbing truths about how pearls are cultured, to the peasants who were once executed for carrying amber to the centuries-old quest by magicians and scientists to make a perfect diamond, Jewels tells dazzling stories with a wonderment and brilliance truly worthy of its subjects.

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love. The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.

Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice

"Like Interview with the Vampire, Memnoch has a half-maddened, fever-pitch intensity. . . . Narrated by Rice's most cherished character, the vampire Lestat, Memnoch tells a tale as old as Scripture's legends and as modern as today's religious strife."
--Rolling Stone

The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe

Our protagonist takes refuge in an abandoned castle and discovers a room with a series of paintings accompanied by a small book describing them. His attention is attracted by an oval portrait depicting a young woman of rare beauty. The book tells of the artist falling in love with the gir and marrying her. It was not soon after that the girl realised her husband was already married to his art. One day the painter decides to paint his wife and in doing so with such fervor, he didn’t notice that as the days passed she became more and more saddened. When the portrait was finished he was shocked to discover that the painting of his wife was much, much more than life-like.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Dorian Gray, a handsome young man, receives a beautiful painting of himself from his good friend Basil Hallward. In the same moment, a new acquaintance, Lord Henry, introduces Dorian to the ideals of youthfulness and hedonism, of which Gray becomes immediately obsessed. Meanwhile, the painting in Dorian's possession serves as a constant reminder of his passing beauty and youth, driving his obsession.