Broken Colors [Paperback]

Michele Zackheim (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2007

"A profoundly original, beautifully written work, so emotionally accurate that it tears at the heart. I read it without stopping."-Gerald Stern

Sophie Marks' path to artistic and personal fulfillment takes her from World War II England to postwar Paris and the Italian countryside. She leaves Europe in 1967 and spends the next two decades in the American Southwest. Acclaimed at last as an artist, she returns to England to confront the hidden memories of her childhood and test the possibilities of a renewed love, a passion ripened by maturity.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Einstein's Daughter and Violette's Embrace, Zackheim delivers the epic life of a woman whose art and survival become ever more tightly bound with passing years. With her firebrand parents dead at the close of WWI, Sophie Marks lives out a protracted childhood aesthetics lesson in the pre-WWII English Midlands with her painter grandfather Eli and poet grandmother Claire. At the Slade School of Art in London, Sophie falls for French student Rene; she returns home pregnant and abandoned. Hitler's bombings bring terror and hardship, and a direct hit upon the family's cottage leaves Sophie bereft. Afterward, in a convalescent sanitarium, Sophie's romance with the shell-shocked and disfigured Maj. Hugh Roderick ends in tragedy, but not before the two exchange portraits. Sophie again returns to her barren homestead and undertakes a very complex form of mourning in her grandmother's garden. Over the 200-plus pages of Sophie's next 55 years, Zackheim introduces the novel's major theme of art as a series of interments and disinterments, new ground being broken as old ground is plundered. Her postwar heroine displays ample pluck and depth of feeling in the face of trauma. (Oct.)
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Review

This is a beautiful novel, sometimes comic and always wise. Visual artist Zackheim (Violette's Embrace) imbues the novel with her deep knowledge of the art world, from techniques to agents to the world of galleries. Highly recommended for medium-sized and larger libraries -- LIBRARYJOURNAL, October 2007

With soaring lyricism, Zackheim limns an exquisitely haunting portrait of an indelibly scarred, yet deeply passionate, woman. -- Booklist, October 1, 2007

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Europa Editions (October 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933372370
• ISBN-13: 978-1933372372
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #857,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Choosing to be an artist...is like getting lost in the darkness and spending the rest of your life trying to find your way.", November 22, 2007

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Broken Colors (Paperback)

Sophie Marks is an artist who has experienced many tragedies in her life, all of which have affected her ability to experience pure love. She spends her toddler years in England after losing both her parents. As a college student during the Blitz of War II, she loses everyone else who is close to her. Even in her years as a mature artist, she suffers--unable to trust, unable to talk about the depths of her sorrow, and unable to open herself completely. Living a life that often consists of "broken colors," Sophie sometimes fails to recognize what is pure and true and fails to see that she herself sometimes creates the "broken colors" which muddy the palette of her own life.

Author Michele Zackheim develops Sophie's emotional and creative life from her early childhood until she is a woman of eighty, as she struggles, first, to become a successful artist, primarily of portraits, and second, to become a successful person, one who is an independent thinker but who is open to love. It is the "love" part which is the most difficult for her. Sometimes confusing love and sex, she makes mistakes, "loving" the wrong person, trusting lovers who excite her but whom she truly does not know, and finally experiencing real love but taking it for granted until it is too late. Or is it?

Zackheim brings this novel to life by recreating the intensity of the artistic experience--what drives the artist, how the artist sees the world and captures a vision on canvas, the choices each artist makes as s/he allows an inner vision to come to life, and how the artist's own life affects what s/he sees and reveals in his/her work. An acclaimed artist herself, before becoming a writer, Zackheim writes with the color and emotional fervor of a painter, creating a canvas of words which bring Sophie to life just as Sophie's portraits bring her own subjects to life.

As Sophie moves from England to Italy and the American Southwest, and then returns late in life to the scenes of her childhood in England and a place where she experienced happiness in Italy, the reader moves with her, grieving and loving as she does, empathizing with her pain and her triumphs, and hoping that she will make choices which allow her to grow and flourish. Hers is a vibrant, passionate life, described here in vibrant, passionate language. Responding to the world viscerally, Sophie lives on the edge, both personally and professionally. When as an old woman she finally comes to terms with her "broken colors," the reader hopes as much as Sophie does that she will finally see life and love in pure, true color. n Mary Whipple

Violette's Embrace
Einstein's Daughter: The Search for Lieserl
Biography - Zackheim, Michele (1941-): An article from: Contemporary Authors Online

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars wonderful, September 25, 2007

By 

Anonymous (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Broken Colors (Paperback)

I read this almost in a single sitting - bought it one afternoon, started that night, resumed the next morning, first at the breakfast table, then at a cafe, finally in a park by the river. What a wonderful story - epic, yet somehow like a series of small paintings... I am curious how many of the techniques are ones the author has used (her bio says she is also a visual artist), how many invented or imagined. And the endless balancing act, for an artist, of the need for solitude and the need for love - so real, as is the drive to come full circle. Beautifully written - I look forward to re-reading it.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an artist's response, September 30, 2007

By 

Joyce Kozloff "Joycekoz" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Broken Colors (Paperback)

I loved them way she describes the processes of making art, a rarity in literature.
The whole, long story of the life of a woman artist moved me, sometimes to tears. Zackheim felt the character's story deeply, and told it beautifully.
Joyce Kozloff