Customer Reviews

Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book grabbed me with the first sentence and didn't let go through the entire book. The author has a wonderful engaging style of writing and I found myself absolutely engrossed with the story. Her ability to "paint" the images of the characters in the readers mind through words really brought them to life for me. Even if you're not a fan of Monet's work you'll find this a intriguing read that's difficult to put down once you start.

Stephanie Cowell's `Claude & Camille' is primarily about Monet's life with his muse, his lover, and ultimately his wife, the enigmatic Camille Doncieux. `Claude & Camille' is presented in flashbacks starting in Giverny, 1908. While I am, somewhat, familiar with Monet's life, I knew little about Camille's life.

The parts of this novel, which most impressed me, were those that were not only evocative of Monet's life with Camille. I love reading about Monet's interactions with his contemporaries, and I was immediately caught up, once more, in the Café where Renoir, Bazille, Pissarro, and other great artists met to discuss their plight, possible strategies for recognition, exchange of ideas, concepts, etc. [I would like to add that I was pleasantly surprised to see Courbet make an appearance.]

I am quite interested in the alliance between Bazille and Monet. I am most grateful that Stephanie Cowell expanded on this friendship. Bazille is depicted as emotionally, as well as financially supportive of Monet's work. Monet appeared to be rather dependent upon his kindness and generosity. Additionally, I enjoyed reading about Renoir's pragmatic attempts to engage Monet. It almost seemed as if Renoir wanted to protect Monet. I so love the work of all of these artists, as well as other great masters.

As mentioned above, the most engaging and authentic parts of this novel [for me] involve Monet's friendships, his need - dedication at all costs - to be the groundbreaking artist that he was. I simply joined them and reading parts of this novel were effortless. I derived much pleasure from accompanying these artists at the Café, standing on line with them, and hoping that their work would be accepted at the prestigious Salon. I especially liked reading Renoir and Bazille's letters to Monet.

Monet has painted many different portraits of Camille. He came upon her by chance and was immediately fascinated by her. Monet's paintings of Camille are famous and deservedly so. Camille is, somewhat, elusive and one senses that she was quite the bohemian. She defies her family, her era and openly lives with Monet prior to their marriage.

Camille is often portrayed as moody, often depressed, and then a little manic [I am referring to her shopping sprees.] Camille chose her life and I do wonder, at times, if she knew exactly how difficult it would be living with Monet.

Monet, the man, is depicted as someone who is obsessed by his need to create. He often seemed to be a self-centered, egomaniacal individual whose priorities were his work and then his personal life. This, even when they could not pay for necessities.

The least engaging part of this novel, in my humble opinion, is the dialogue. Monet was a genius at creating how nature changes when the light changes. His paintings are nuanced, and I just was not convinced that his dialogue would be so basic, almost without nuance.

Those who enjoy historical fiction will most likely enjoy this novel. While I am not among this audience, I remain interested in Monet's work, his alliances with his contemporaries and, of course, his life with Camille.

Monet's Water Lilies, as well as his many other breathtaking works give him immortality. His life with Camille, as well as Alice bestows immortality to these women and his progeny.

Thank you to Stephanie Cowell. The information contained in `Claude & Camille' prompted many discussions in this reader's home.

This novel is like part fun history lesson and part engrossing love story.
Stephanie Cowell begins and ends her story with passages set in the early 1900's, but the bulk of
the book is a sort of a rich flashback to the tumultuous relationship between Claude and Camille.
While I was reading I felt like I was peeking into a fully realized world.

This is one of my favorite passages in the book.
"Only with my brush when i can paint again will I express it. Whenever I do in the rest of my life, my
love for you is part of it, and in everything I paint I will remember you and say with my work what you
were to me".

"Claude & Camille" doesn't read like just a flimsy romance story, there's more substance to it. I'd
recommend it to historical fiction fans, and also to those interested in the lives of the impressionist painters.

Hard as it is to fathom today, Claude Monet spent the first twenty years of his career as the proverbial starving artist. (It's also hard to believe that his name was Oscar!) Stephanie Cowell tells the story of his relationship with the love of his life, Camille Doncieux, who gave up a life of privilege to be with her Claude. The novel is a series of interconnected vignettes depicting Monet as an elderly man recalling his life with Camille. His passion for painting in the new style called Impressionism, and the role Camille played not only as his wife and model, but also his muse, form the core of the book. The Monets lived the expected Bohemian lifestyle, and there are plenty of scenes in which they interact with the other artists in the movement and their friends and relations.

Unfortunately, there are some novelists who are adept at showing rather than telling, but Cowell, alas, does not seem to be one of them. Perhaps her style might best be described as prosaic, lending a sort of flatness to a narrative that might have been alive with fervor and excitement (see Susan Vreeland's Luncheon of the Boating Party, on Renoir, for comparison.) This weakness does not prevent Claude and Camille from being and interesting story, just a great one. Worth reading, however, for anyone who loves the art of Claude Monet.

One of the most prolific of the French Impressionists comes to life through the prose of a writer who literally inhabits the desperate, painful years of the birth of Impressionism, Claude Monet. Focusing on the early years- before the magnificent water lilies of his later period- Monet is unable to resist the siren call of his art, disappointing family to travel to Paris, where he meets the other struggling artists of the visionary movement and his muse, Camille Doncieux. This band of brothers, Cezanne, Renoir, Pisarro, Degas, Edouard Manet and Frederick Bazille share a common passion and rejection by the esteemed Palais de l'Institute Paris Salon, which consistently views their work as "unfinished". Yet these tortured, driven artists realize that success lies in relentless dedication and fraternity, gathering in cafes and lofts, encouraging one another through brutal winters and sparkling Parisian springs when the light dances on their canvasses.

Monet, like other such artistic geniuses, is underappreciated, riddled with self-doubt, yet unable to turn away from his calling. When he meets Camille Doncieux, she becomes his touchstone and the subject of many of his most famous paintings, although theirs is a relationship bedeviled by emotional extremes. Camille rejects a wealthy family for the itinerant life of an artist with few prospects and only the occasional patron. The relationship between Claude and Camille, the crux of Cowell's novel, is painful and passionate, each with their personal flaws and mistakes. Regardless of missteps and misunderstandings, Claude and Camille are unable to break the bond that ties them together, even when Claude is brought to his knees in despair. The lovers are buffeted by doubts, but Camille is indisputably Monet's muse.

Cowell captures the unrelenting turbulence of such an existence, the desperate poverty, passionate friendships, war with Prussia and the siren call of artist and canvas. It is hard to imagine such hardship, or the pure joy of creativity, but the author perfectly captures the essence of the artistic life, and the sacrifices entailed. The Paris of the Impressionists is not glamorous. It is wretched, freezing cold in winter, yet these artists are buoyed by the camaraderie of deep and loyal friendships and a shared cause. Monet moves from Paris to the country to the coast of Normandy to England and back to Paris, the ranks of the painters decimated by war, but still united in spirit. The result is a moving portrait of a man who embodies the Impressionist movement and the woman who is his beloved muse. Luan Gaines/2010.

Why are good things wasted on the young? When I was in elementary school we took a Greyhound bus trip to the Art Institute of Chicago to study the paintings. I saw one of Monet's water lily series. I don't recall being much impressed. Now, when this book has given the man and his work new value to me, I neither live near Chicago nor have a school to pay my way. C'est la vie!

There's a great deal more to Claude Monet than can be known from a casual glance at one painting. He was a young man once, in love with a girl even younger. Stephanie Cowell imagines them as a pair of dreamers: the man dreams of fame and wealth and the girl dreams that a poor artist in debt will give her a life of plenty someday. Their love is rocked again and again with each loss of faith. _Claude and Camille_ is the story of how it endures, until death takes the muse away from the man.

As fictional biographies go this one puts more stress on 'fiction' than 'biography,' with only the barest bones of Camille's life and character known fact. The rest is speculation, or pure imagination, as it would have to be with so little known about Camille today. I respect that Cowell told me this in the book's acknowledgements. I'm still a little uneasy with some of the liberties taken: certain plot points or scenes are good for drama, but whether they do a disservice to Camille's memory... well... it's something I could argue. I wish there were a way to know what Camille was really like. I think I probably would have liked her better in life.

_Claude and Camille_ is much more about Claude than Camille, though, and Monet is painted as a vigorous, passionate figure fighting with everything that would keep him from his art; sometimes that includes Camille herself, but never the dear friends who would become his fellow Impressionists. This is also the story of the movement seen through Monet's eyes. The artists Bazille, Renoir, and Pissaro are wonderful, and it's so easy to get lost in Cowell's detailed visions of the studios they shared. It's an absorbing and beautiful book. The rough trials of Monet and Camille make their love so passionate. Their friendships lend them support. And behind them, before them, there is always art.

I can't recommend this to someone only interested in historical facts since there's so much made up, and I would definitely keep in mind when reading it that not all is accurate, but it's still a fascinating story. In its way it's inspiring, with Monet's dedication to his art through what seems like endless misfortune a reminder that losing a personal battle doesn't mean losing the war. Ms. Cowell's prose made the Paris of the Impressionists come alive for me. Pick up this book if you want a rich what-might-have-been. It's no sweet, delicate romance, but the people in it, however embroidered by necessity, seem real.

I absolutely adored this book. Partly it's because of my fascination with and love of Monet's work. It's also due to the beautiful writing of Stephanie Cowell. She writes with an ethereal quality that is reminiscent of Monet's own lovely paintings. The book opens with a quote by Monet which provides great insight into his mind:

I had so much fire in me and so many plans.
I always want the impossible.
Take clear water with grass waving at the bottom.
It's wonderful to look at, but to try and paint it is
enough to make one insane.

The story is very deep and layered. It is about love, passion, talent, ambition, struggle, desperate poverty, despair, hope, and friendship. It's also about expectations of parents, differences in class, and the devastating effects of war on societies and personal lives.

Claude Monet's deep friendships with other artists such as Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissaro, Frederic Bazille, Paul Cezanne, Manet, Degas, and others are what help sustain him through unimaginable heartaches, disappointments, and challenges.

When young Monet meets and falls madly in love with Camille Doncieux, his life is forever changed. Camille, a beautiful young woman from the upper-class, agrees to model for Monet. His first great success is with a portrait of her in an exquisite green opera dress.

The two enter into an affair, which her parents vehemently oppose. In spite of them, and their feelings that Monet is beneath her, Camille follows her heart, and becomes his true love, greatest muse, and mother of his children. Yet their relationship comes close to destroying both of them. This is a story of the power a great love holds over us, through a lifetime, and often beyond.

Appreciation for Monet's real genius only came late in life. He gave his first exhibition of his water lily paintings at age sixty-nine. In his eighties, prior to his death, he completed his great paintings of his gardens at Giverny.

This novel is based on history, and is positively captivating. Reading it gives new meaning and admiration for the beauty inherent in his work, as well as a new understanding of the man who created such breathtaking art. This book has made me a fan of Stephanie Cowell. Very enthusiastically recommended!

From this book, I did learn about the friendships and support among the Impressionists...Monet, Renoir, Brazile, Pisarro..and their tremendous support, both financial and emotional, for each other. I also did appreciate the actual quotes by artists, dealers and critics at the beginning of each chapter. If it had not been for what I learned, I would have given this book only 1 star as I found the writing incredibly simplistic...actually boring. I couldn't wait to finish it.

Monet is arguably the greatest of the Impressionists. Who can gaze upon The Magpie and not marvel at the hundreds of shades of snow, nor fail to be intensely moved by the huge Waterlily canvases that were the culmination of Monet's career? Monet's great gift makes one wonder about the life behind the paintings. Was Monet in tune with the Divine, as his paintings would indicate?

Er, no.

Claude and Camille opens in 1908 as Monet is painting his Waterlilies series at Giverny. The book is written as flashbacks to Monet's decision to pursue art as a career against his family's wishes, Army service, studies under the landscape painter Boudin, bohemian life in Paris, tumultuous relationship with Camille and the world events that forced his move to London. His was largely a hardscrabble life spent one step ahead of creditors, trying to convince his family and friends to continue to fund his art, and once he and Camille took up with each other, trying to support a family. Cowell's Monet is arrogant, talented and insecure, relying on painting to take him away from emotional turmoil. Her Camille is a bewildering mishmash of deceit and loyalty, but the novel is successful in giving the reader a sense of why these two complicated creatures were attracted to each other.

It's an ambitious novel that dares to get inside the heads of Monet's circle of friends--Renoir, Pisarro, Manet and especially Bazille. If Cowell doesn't exactly pull it off, it's not the fault of her research nor her attention to detail in recreating the world of the Impressionists. When this novel succeeds, it's brilliant.

Claude Monet was a struggling young artist who was part of a burgeoning movement - living from sale to sale of his artwork, collaborating with his fellow painters: Frederic Bazille, Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. Camille Doncieux was a flowering young woman from the upper crust of society who was set to follow the path laid out for her by her parents - the way all respectable young women should. When these two accidentally cross paths, both of their lives change in ways that they could never imagine.

I loved the way that this story was framed - there are sections from the past lives of Claude and Camille, each laid out with dates, and interludes of Claude's later life in his beautiful home/garden in Giverny. There are intimate details revealed in the interludes that explain parts of the back story. From the very beginning, which is set in one of the interludes, you get the feeling that there is a great sadness in Claude's life - something which happened that he is held responsible for. You can feel his pain and sadness, and even though you know that something terrible is going to happen and you think you are prepared for it, I would be very surprised if you don't shed a few tears upon the reveal.

I was never a huge fan of Monet's artwork - I can appreciate it, but I'm not a fan of the Impressionist movement as a whole. Not being a fan, I had never thought to consider looking up anything about his life, but after reading this novel, I was very interested in the life of Claude and Camille. While parts of the novel are fictionalized for the sake of the story, I thought that it only added to the allure of Monet. I know that the beautiful cover was initially what drew me to this book (this is not the current cover, but I am so thankful to have received the ARC copy with my favorite cover) and I am so glad that I picked it up - one of my top reads so far this year.

This was a beautifully written story and this would be one of those books that I would read again. I am going to move Marrying Mozart by Stephanie Cowell up my TBR list because of how much I enjoyed this book.

This book was received from the publisher in exchange for a review and this was also posted on my blog.