Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read this book., April 30, 2009
This review is from: The American Painter Emma Dial: A Novel (Hardcover)
I loved this book. I finished it a few weeks ago and I can't stop thinking about it. The writing is beautiful: strong, intelligent, clean, almost fearless. There's also a gorgeous strength to the main character, Emma, and the writing reflected that strength perfectly. I re-read passages two, three, four times, because I didn't want to leave them behind. Samantha Peale takes us into the New York art world and the details of that world are fascinating. But the story is also very universal in that it allows a glimpse inside that quest for our creative soul and the search for who we are and where we stand in our community. I highly recommend this book for anyone who likes a gripping story and terrific writing.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Art and Power, May 10, 2009
This review is from: The American Painter Emma Dial: A Novel (Hardcover)
Samantha Peale is especially adept at writing about power in the elite art world, in all its shifting forms--a dance between those who have it and those who want more of it; those who can purchase a ticket with their wealth, thus linking themselves; and those, like Emma Dial, on the periphery and in the background, who want to extricate art from power, in service to art, although for Emma, the two are complexly held together.
The maneuverings behind the scenes are adroitly written, in service to keeping the art titans firmly in place. Everything is measured in relation to this mix of art and power, including friendships; and, while many fall to the wayside, Emma Dial is at the brink, having to decide whether to continue to lose herself to the fiscally rewarding safety of her employer/lover's shadow, or to break away, by whatever means necessary, to the enormous risk of being an artist in her own right.
With Emma Dial, we're given a different kind of heroine: unsentimental, with a steady unwavering perceptive voice; hiding behind the reputation of her employer, doing the work while he receives the glory; able, yet insecure about the follow through, the blustery, ego-driven selling, that she knows is necessary; and, for the most part, two or three paces ahead of everyone else.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
portrait of the artist as a woman, May 8, 2009
This review is from: The American Painter Emma Dial: A Novel (Hardcover)
In the first half of this book, the descriptions of the daily life of a painter's assistant in downtown New York have a vividness, a suffused quality that places and people in your life take on when they are about to be irrevocably lost. The main character, Emma, is in a rut, yet Peale's writing makes her behavior and surroundings--smoking all night, listening to the same song over and over again, dinner with cherished, flawed friends--captivating to read. Our main character, maybe anti-hero, Emma, is not so much alienated as unsentimental, and this, I think we're meant to understand as her real promise as an artist. Her emotional vulnerability is not what propels the story or organizes the details. Rather, the book progresses the way the creative labor of painting and the creative labor of making a life for yourself progress. Once Emma gets out from under her mentor/boss/lover's successful and gorgeous shadow, the book shifts location and tone. From the character and detail-crowded setting of a very inhabited New York to a strongly-lit loneliness in Florida, where our heroine is a stranger. And Peale's description evokes the shifting moods of leaving, setting out, staring new, in her character. As someone who has lost one life and started another, I really related to Emma Dial. I've never read a description of the slow way you build a new life, the creative aspect of it, but also the sheer lonely will. I think of this book as a kind of answer to "The Awakening." That book ends with a woman who gave up everything for romantic love, and killed herself when it didn't work out. This book depicts a woman following her own vision of life, not a familiar romantic one, and the difficulty and necessity of realizing it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
