Love and Impressionism: Picturing the forty-year relationship between Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas (Paris, 1877 to 1927): Is it any wonder that Robin Oliveira has achieved her lofty goal in I Always Loved You of creating an historical novel with a “soul”?  Guided by research that sounds as passionate as her artist characters – she’s read 70 – 80 books, traveled 20,000 miles, offers 40 links on her website to artworks cited in her novel – she delves into and shapes the tumultuous, complex relationship between one of the most influential artists of Impressionism – Edgar Degas – and the American woman who exhibited “more pictures in Paris than any other” – Mary Cassatt – and asks if it was Love?

In imagining a conflicted, emotional story of two great artists who shared a deep, enduring admiration for each other’s artistry and devotion to their art, Oliveira sets out to answer the question, “Was there room for love in two lives already consumed by passion?”  She was inspired by the knowledge that Cassatt, at the end of her life and upon Degas’ death, burned a lifetime of their letters.  In re-creating them, the author offers up glimpses, as Degas revealed his affections to Mary in his private communications but was bewildering and unknowable in public.

Digging deeper, the author examines “what is love,” “what is happiness?” in many dimensions, staying close to history.  In so doing, she gives us a veritable “Who’s Who” of an amazing circle of artists, many friends with each other, sometimes entangled relatives, an Impressionism 101 cast of characters that also includes forerunners to Impressionism – Realism – and those who soon followed – the Post-Impressionists – and others who affected the impressionists such as art critics, writers, and art dealers.  The list of famous and not-so-familiar names is long.  That the author has executed all of this in such a tightly woven novel (343 pages) is quite impressive.

What this means for the reader is that I Always Loved You is packed with little details that if you turn the pages too quickly you are likely to miss.  So take your time reading this novel, it begs us to linger, maybe even take some notes as I did, because there’s so much art and cultural history behind the telling of Cassatt’s and Degas’ story, organized in appropriately short chapters because they are dense with tidbits of information.

The heart of the novel takes place from 1874 to 1886.  The Belle Époque was a golden, peaceful time in France’s history (post-Prussian War/pre-World War I), when the modern city of Paris was designed and born.  It seems no other city could possibly be more in love with art, or be more enchanting and beguiling.  Enter the Impressionists: a “new school of painting” whose appreciation took many years, after being mocked by the classical painters, rejected by the Paris Salon – the premier art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, where academic techniques reigned supreme, intimacy shunned.  The impressionists, on the other hand, rejected their conservatism, favoring brilliant colors in gorgeous natural and artificial light that exposed the most intimate of moments in everyday Parisian life.  “Paint what you see,” “paint what you love,” Degas mentors Cassatt, his enduring legacy of love to her.

For although this novel is peopled with the likes of the Manet brothers (handsome, bon vivant Édouard and goodly Eugène) and Eugène’s wife, impressionist painter Berthe Morisot (a lifelong love for the brother, the brother for her, and struggling with painting after motherhood); Monet, Cézanne, and Renoir (“traitors” for exhibiting at the Salon); Camille Pissarro and Gustave Caillebotte (gentlemanly, “beloved”); Félix and Marie Bracquemond; Zacharie Astruc; Émile Zola; Paul Gauguin; Henri Somme and so many others (Sisley, Durand, Daudet, Ingres, Lebourg, Delacroix, Raffaëlli, Tourney, Zandomeneghi), they are still the background framing a stirring picture of Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas, who sought each other out in this teeming milieu because they admired each other’s work so much.

When Mary first arrives in Paris from Pennsylvania, she obsesses and struggles with her art; no matter how disciplined and hard-working, she doubts she’ll ever achieve excellence over technique.  It’s Degas who encourages her to experiment with color and light.  She is in awe of how Degas can keep his “brush stroke so light yet communicate so much.”  Once he awakens in her a new way of seeing and creating, she feels she “cannot live without him.”  Their relationship is up and down, over so many years.  Both never marry.  Was theirs a romantic love, or were they emotionally bound to a deep respect and love for each other’s art?

Besides focusing on the complexities of the multi-faceted theme of Love, the plight of these struggling Parisian artists, many living in poverty, others struck down by serious illnesses, is another big theme.  Degas remains the purist to his passions, antagonizing, alienating, scorning any artist he believes has sold his soul to make a living, which includes exhibiting at the esteemed Salon.  So, he, for example, feels Renoir will “prettify anyone for enough coin.”  Renoir, in turn, is critical of Degas’ sculptural, radical masterpiece, Little Dancer.  Degas is so obsessed with perfectionism that after a year of working side-by-side with Cassatt to produce an avant-garde journal of sketches and prose that involves painstaking work on an Italian printing press backs out at the very last minute, without even telling Mary, who gave up a year of painting for the project and Degas.  She is, of course, infuriated, one of many times Degas has been dismissive, uncommunicative, unreliable.  What she doesn’t know is how alike they really are.  Degas recognizes they are kindred souls: he too fears his work is not good enough and, despite what Mary thinks, it does not come effortlessly.

Key characters suffer from chronic, debilitating illnesses, which given the century are poorly understood and badly treated.  Some accept their situation with incredible grace: Lydia, Mary’s older, loving sister, often sat for Mary, never married either; and Abigail (May) Alcott Nieriker (yes!  Louisa’s sister) who seemed to have everything Mary did not (acceptance at the Salon, a happy marriage), whose life seemed so easy until a terrible childbirth.  Two illnesses are particularly cruel: Degas’ progressively degenerating eyesight which he kept hidden except from Mary – an artist who loves light but is going blind; and Édouard Manet’s decline from “Napoleon fever” (syphilis) caused by his illicit dalliances, embarrassing and painful for a man who loved life and people.

Knowing how vital Parisian light was to the impressionists, the author’s prose is wonderfully sprinkled with numerous references to light: “Paris is shining” in its “footlights” and “gaslamps,” falling light, half-light, dawnlight, candlelight, soft light, grey light, afternoon light, “light of southern France,” “washed darkness.”  For Mary, “color and light are all she has in the world by way of her tools.”  The same evocative prose holds true for the author’s depiction of this Parisian era – Victorian and Old French – words such as cheval glass, décolletage, fiacre, abattoir, abonnés, vitrine.

Mary’s awfully protective father, Robert, wants to know what it “means to be an artist in Paris?”  Thanks to a gifted writer (and researcher), we have a much better answer to his question than when we started.

Happy Reading in the New Year!  Lorraine

Romantic comedy set in an Australian university (present day):  One of the pleasures of book blogging is the freedom to choose what to share.  Taking a lesson from genetics professor Don Tillman – the thirty-nine-year-old narrator of this utterly charming and intelligent romantic comedy who dispenses with predictability and self-imposed rules – I’m expanding my definition of “beautiful prose” to include original prose.

Owing to the “great fun” of The Rosie Project – which also delivers a poignant and meaningful message about people who are “wired differently” – I’ll hereafter allow myself to blog about novels whose prose is wonderfully original despite containing language excessively four-worded, outside my definition of beautiful.  (Note: it’s part of the dialogue that fits the “barmaid” stereotype and disillusioned persona of Rosie.)  The rest of this modern-day novel’s prose is consistently funny, the kind of laugh-out-loud humor that takes talent.  We’re talking pitch-perfect nerdy language that befits a professor of science whose brain thinks literally, unconventionally.  (For instance, instead of visiting a shop to rent a tuxedo, our lovable Don visits a “formal costume rental establishment” for “maximum formality”).  Interestingly, and inspirationally, this is IT consultant Graeme Simsion’s debut novel, to be published in 35 languages.  The Rosie Project is that good!

For Simsion has dreamed up a timely version of When Harry Met Sally.  Instead of Billy Crystal, imagine another actor (who? Sony Pictures has already optioned the script for a movie) playing a high-functioning professor with Asperger’s syndrome who doesn’t know it, in search of a “female life partner” using scientific methods.  Designing a wife questionnaire, the author creates comical prose that touches on serious issues related to unethical behaviors and society’s obsession with image and appearance.

Don Tillman is lovable for many reasons.  Chief among them is his ability to appreciate his skills (organizational, focus/intensity, fast learner) and accept his differences (difficulties in: being touched, picking up on social cues, empathizing).  He deals well with rejection: an “expert at being laughed at.”  While he doesn’t have many friends, he has two that care about him: Gene, the fifty-six-year-old psychology professor who hired him, specializes in “sexual attraction” and claims that he has an open marriage with Claudia, who happens to be Don’s therapist.

The prose is also pitch-perfect because it matches Don’s respect for efficiency.  Just by listing a few examples of the efficiency of Don’s characterizations of events, people, and experiences, you’ll be able to picture what The Rosie Project is all about:

The Wife Project (of which The Rosie Project becomes a sub-set)

The Father Project (which leads to The Rosie Project).  Rosie is searching for her biological father.  Gene introduces her to Don (she’s not just a “barmaid”; she’s a graduate psychology student in Gene’s department), a logical choice because Don is a geneticist.  Gene, of course, knows about The Wife Project.

Great Cocktail Night (in which Don has one of the best times of his life, with Rosie, posing as a “drinks waiter”): “It was surprisingly complex, and I am not a naturally dexterous person” although Don has taught himself martial arts, karate, aikido, and dancing (taught with a skeleton!), during which Don and Rosie unethically pursue the Mass DNA Collection Subproject (at a physician’s reunion.  Rosie’s mother was a doctor, who told her that her biological father was one too. )

Standardized Meal System (for which Don has identified “eight major advantages”)

Late Woman: Timeliness is one among many personal traits Don values.  He thinks mathematically, talks in precise minutes.  He also thinks in facts, not emotions, so he describes people in terms of their age and BMI; their food preferences (vegetarian, sustainably farmed); exercised (something he’s big on); and alcohol consumer (also big on).

Don is also reflective, in an admirable, authentic way, and not afraid to make major changes in “self-improvement.”  When an “unscheduled series of events” leads him to finally solve his own profound question (“Why do we focus on certain things and not others?”), the answer, he says, is “incredible.”  We say so too, because the story feels so incredibly good.

In winning a beautiful copy (appealing jacket design) of The Rosie Project, I won more than a complimentary copy of a highly entertaining novel that feels as memorable as Sleepless in Seattle. (Who could play the new Tom Hanks? Tom Hanks!)  “Enchanted Prose” has a bigger umbrella than previously envisioned.  Now I might discover non-fiction that reads so much like fiction I’ll tell you about it too.  Like Don, though, you’ll recognize it’s still me.

Happy Reading!  Lorraine

WWII’s END, NORDHAUSEN, GERMANY (1945)/BIRTH OF ROCKET CITY, HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA (1957):  For a relatively short novel (257 pages) spanning two historical timeframes, The Melody of Secrets packs quite an emotional punch!  Three assumptions why:

1. The author: Jeffrey Stepakoff draws on his deft screenwriting skills to write cinematic scenes, so you feel like you’re watching a movie – a great one!
2. The dialogue: as a screenwriter, Stepakoff knows how to create crisp, provocative, informative, interesting dialogue that moves the novel forward at a brisk, page-turning pace.
3. Plot #1: original, shocking, complex, controversial.  Has anyone else fictionalized the historical truth underpinning this novel?  Did you know America recruited Nazi rocket scientists who were SS officers for our space race against Russia during the Cold War?  The best known, Wernher Von Braun, headed a team of a dozen or so German aerospace engineers who came to Huntsville in the ‘50s to launch America’s space program.  In the author’s retelling, besides Von Braun, two other scientist characters are: Hans Reinhardt, whose wife, Maria, is the central voice; and Karl Janssen, whose wife, Sabine, discovers her husband’s secret past, and in her torment confides and warns Maria, setting off one of the novel’s two plot themes: what about the rest of the team?  Is Maria married to a former SS officer?

What did America know?  How much is historically true?

It’s a testament to the novel that the reader MUST know the answers.  I would have preferred an Author’s Note separating fact from fiction.  Absent that, movie-like – and rich book club material – you will feel emotionally and intellectually driven to search out these profound questions once the novel ends, also provocatively.

Here’s a case where the facts are as shocking as the fiction.  Operation Paperclip was conducted by an agency (the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency) specifically created at the end of WWII for the sole purpose of bringing Hitler’s German rocket scientists to the US so we could beat the Russians in space (and prevent Russia from engaging them), at the time of the Cold War.  However, President Truman forbid, by law, our mobilizing any known “member of the Nazi party and more than a normal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism or militarism.”  So, a secret military operation cleaned up the scientists’ records, enabling them to obtain security clearances to emigrate here and lead our space race.  Truman, apparently, never knew his directive was violated!

After learning this, I appreciated the clever title of a chapter: “Paper Clip.”  Note: while rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun was a recognized Nazi sympathizer and SS officer, I think Stepakoff has fictionalized the Hans and Karl characters, because I can’t find any other references to them.

4. Plot #2: the novel’s title captures its love story, connecting 1945 and 1957.  Beautiful Maria plays her Pressenda violin beautifully; Hans gave it to her at war’s end.  In 1957, she’s the star of the fledgling Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, practicing for a major fundraising concert for the community.  That’s when she spots Lieutenant James Cooper, who entered her life in 1945.  He still stirs deep romantic emotions, causing her to question the life she has built in the US, and to make painful choices that have national consequences, made even more difficult by her love for her son, Peter.
5. Structure: as Maria struggles to find answers about Hans and to choose between him and Cooper, the pages are turning quickly.  Initial chapters are compartmentalized: the reader witnesses the plot surrounding 1945; in the next chapter, Huntsville’s players are introduced.  But as the two themes interconnect, the chapters condense and fuse: a single page looks back at 1945 and then switches forward to 1957, then seamlessly races back and forth, back and forth.  As Maria races for the truth, so do we.

With Maria’s truth, would you have made the same decision?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Lorraine

SEDUCTION: CREATING A STATE-OF-THE-ART DEPARTMENT STORE, PARIS, END OF THE 19^TH CENTURY:  Do you wish to read more classics yet keep reaching for contemporary fiction?  Are you hooked on Downton Abbey – for its old-world costumes, grand architecture, upstairs-downstairs relationships?  Do you appreciate Mad Men – for its nostalgic fashions, fabulous style, portrayal of the shallowness of new-world greed?  Émile Zola’s, The Ladies Paradise (original title), written nearly 130 years ago, remarkably satisfies all three.  It is remarkable for its lavish prose, and timely message about our culture’s obsession with money.

The charming cover of this newly published companion to PBS’ recent Masterpiece Theatre TV adaptation of Zola’s classic French novel caught my eye.  It gave me the idea to first read the historical novel, and then watch the seven episodes of Season 1 (available online until 12/17), to see whether the old novel vs. the new visual production wins out.  While I’ve only watched the two-hour premiere episode, I already feel hard-pressed to imagine anything beating 438 pages of extravagant prose detailing the “modern realization of a dreamed of palace,” the creation of a “colossal bazaar,” a “cathedral of commerce” where “women reigned supreme.”

The writing builds to a crescendo that matches the intensity of the shopping fever of the women patrons, seduced into buying luxuries they neither need nor can afford, some resorting to thievery, intoxicated by the beauty of fabrics and other merchandise from around the world filling the ever-expanding establishment.

Two characters drive the story:

Octave Mouret – the “governor” – a brilliant businessman from the south of France who “enjoyed a personal pleasure in satisfying other people’s passions” with his big dreams of revolutionizing a drapery business into an opulent department store known all over Paris and the world.  He has exciting ideas for creating and organizing departments, displaying goods, renewing merchandise, reducing prices, absorbing returns, to build his empire – a “borrealistic vista” for his “nation of women” shoppers.

And Denise Baudu, a beautiful, sweet, sensitive, and innocent poor shopgirl from the Valognes countryside, caring for her two younger brothers, who works her way up the sales ladder and defies Mouret’s boasting that the “woman who will catch me isn’t born yet.”  Hers is not just an endearing rags-to-riches story, but a tale of hardship and endurance and courage to stand up for moral principles.

There are many other characters the reader has to keep track of:  Mouret’s right-hand man, Bourdonacle; Denise’s uncle Baudu, whose business, The Old Elbeuf, is depressing against the onslaught of his competition; Bourras, the old umbrella maker who offers Denise scanty accomodations when she leaves those of her employer, for a time; Denise’s good friend, Pauline; Clara, a jealous salesgirl; many lady patrons such as Madames Marty, Robineau, Desforges, Guibal, and Aurelie; other salespeople such as Hutin, Favier, Deloche, whose unrequited love for Denise is painful; and Jouve, the Inspector.  None, however, compare to Mouret’s passions and Denise’s resoluteness when Mouret tries to buy her love.

Still, the primary raison d’etre for posting this review is the sumptuous, extraordinary prose that literally overwhelms the reader, just as the merchandise of The Ladies Paradise overwhelms the female shopper.  Often, Zola uses the metaphor of water to describe the “steady stream of goods,” the “flood of goods,” the“rising sea” of goods, the “swallowing up.”  And oh how he describes his “creations”:

It was at the further end of the hall, around one of the small wrought-iron columns which supported the glass roof, a veritable torrent of stuffs, a puffy sheet falling from above and spreading down to the floor.  At first stood out the light stains and tender silks, the satins à la Reine and Renaissance, with the pearly tones of spring water; light silks, transparent as crystals – Nile green, Indian-azure, May-rose, and Danube-blue. Then came the stronger fabrics:  marvellous satins, duchess silks, warm tints, rolling in great waves; and right at the bottom, as in a fountain-basin, reposed the heavy stuffs, the figured silks, the damasks, brocades, and lovely silvered silks in the midst of a deep bed of every sort – black, white, and colored – skillfully disposed on silk and satin grounds, hollowing out with their medley of colors a still lake in which the reflex of the sky seemed to be dancing.

The sharp prose also provides Zola a means for Mouret, in one of his “fits of frankness,” to verbalize the growing anti-Semitism of this period in French history.  For this is the novelist who some years later penned an essay, “J’Accuse,” referring to the Dreyfus case, in which a Jewish French army officer was wrongly accused of providing secrets to Germany.  Zola was later sued by the French army, imprisoned, and eventually fled to England.  So, the BBC’s adaptation of his novel to northern England feels right.

I’d love to know which won out for you?  Zola’s novel or PBS?

Lorraine

Illuminating the life of Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1927 to 1974):  This fabulous historical novel distinguishes itself by its emotional power.  The ending brought me to tears, when I realized, as the author did, that the answer to her meticulously researched question – “Why do we all love the Lindberghs?” – was: “Because of Anne.”

Melanie Benjamin excels here at her craft.  She has dared to stay true to the  achievements of perhaps the “most famous man in the world” in the early 20^th century, yet speculates in depth on the emotions behind his exceedingly private character and his wife’s – including the rise of his Anti-Semitic beliefs at a crucial time in history – and she does so slowly, sensitively, perceptively, convincingly.

The world’s flying hero, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, made history in 1927 at the age of 25, when he became the first person to fly solo, non-stop, across the Atlantic in his monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis; he was also a prominent admirer of Hitler.  Benjamin has done a superb job in helping us understand how Lucky Lindy/The Lone Eagle evolved from being an isolationist to Anti-Semitic, which America came to believe he was, and his devoted wife, Anne Morrow, finally, painfully, remorsefully concluded he was, too.

Charles Lindbergh was a terrifically controlling husband with secrets.  He married a woman who perceived herself to be a “dull brown pinecone” compared to her glamorous sister, Elisabeth.  Anne Morrow could never get over the aviation hero noticing her, needing her.  Her deep insecurities came at an enormous personal price, having spent her entire married life melting and acquiescing to his unreasonable, outrageous demands.

And yet, Anne Morrow was also Charles Lindbergh’s courageous co-pilot – “The Flying Couple” – and the first woman to become a licensed glider pilot.  She was also a well-educated graduate of Smith College, carrying her family’s educational legacy (her mother later became the College’s President); an Ambassador’s daughter (her father was Mexico’s Ambassador during the Coolidge presidency); a Senator’s daughter (her father was a Senator during the Hoover administration); a talented writer; and the mother of six children, one of whom was kidnapped, the most famous child kidnapping case in the 20^th century.

“The Crime of the Century” came early in this complicated couple’s marriage (1931), and so it had profound, everlasting effects on it.  From the moment Charles Junior was taken from inside their home, Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s story is one of heart-wrenching grief, amid unrelenting media attention.  Over the years, her marriage is also one of sacrifices, regrets, self-recriminations, betrayal, as well as forgiveness and resilience.

On page 88 of this 400 page novel, the story fast-forwards to 1974 when mysterious letters are given to Anne.  Then, Benjamin skillfully moves the novel back and forth in time and geography – following the Lindberghs from New Jersey to Berlin to Paris to Michigan to Connecticut and to Hawaii – taking us inside Anne’s heart and soul, gradually revealing the haunting mystery of those letters.

Benjamin’s prose is quite clever: Anne laments that she allowed “only one set of goggles between us;” weaves in quotes from the headlines of Life magazine; and uses nursery rhymes to evoke the grieving mind-set of a mother whose child has been lost to her during infancy, singing Humpty Dumpty is broken and All The Kings’ Men, asking: “Could they put the Lindbergh’s together again?”

To discover the answer, I encourage you to read The Aviator’s Wife!  

Lorraine