The Light Possessed [Paperback]

Alan Cheuse (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this fictionalized life of American artist Georgia O'Keeffe, Cheuse ( The Grandmother's Club ) examines the artist's place in the world. As a young girl, Ava Boldin persuades her older brother to let her sketch him in the nude, displaying a commitment to her work that will transcend all other passions, even, later in life, drawing her away from her New York City home with her beloved husband, famed photographer Albert Stigmar (O'Keeffe was married to Alfred Stieglitz) to paint her vision in New Mexico. In intimate tones, Ava's friends and family talk about the artist and her work, the lodestone in their own efforts to live well and fully. Amy Cross, a young artist/writer, and Michael Gillen, Stigmar's bastard son, live with Ava in her last years, opening up her memories and ideas about art. Ava's geologist brother Robert and the desert landscape catch the most light in this unsurprising tale, which would have benefited from sterner editing. For the most part, Cheuse's beautifully used language plays only on the surface of characters and themes.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

The life of an extraordinary artist, Ava Boldin, from her birth in Nebraska to New York celebrity to self-imposed exile and death in New Mexico, is recalled by the memoirs of many characters (including Ava herself) that have been given to a young woman to organize. Uncertain about the course their own lives will take, she and her husband have come to stay with Ava, and they serve as a conduit through which the artist again achieves fame.In keeping with its subject, the novel is full of painterly imagery that evokes the verdure of upstate New York and the vast barrenness of New Mexico, locations that have been painted by the late Georgia O'Keeffe. Resemblances to the life of Georgia O'Keeffe cannot be coincidental. Women in particular may find this book of interest because it underscores the difficulties of the woman artist - even a great woman artist who chooses her calling before all else. The Ligbt Possessed is a solid, straightforward narrative. It conveys a sense of loss and sacrifice, although, dramatically speaking, there don't seem to be many peaks or valleys - the characters are somewhat dispassionate about the past they recall. Still, it is a well-crafted and very intelligent book that places due importance on art and the passion of its creators to reveal their unique vision. -- From Independent Publisher --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 325 pages
• Publisher: Perennial (October 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060974117
• ISBN-13: 978-0060974114
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,769,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ALAN CHEUSE


"The Voice of Books on National Public Radio"--that's how novelist, essayist and story writer Alan Cheuse has been described. For over twenty-five years, Cheuse has been "reading for America" every week on NPR, and he's also been writing a number of books of his own, and teaching the art of narrative and literature at George Mason University for over twenty years.
He is the author of the novels The Bohemians, The Grandmothers' Club and The Light Possessed. His latest novel, To Catch the Lightning (winner of the 2009 Grub Street Prize for Fiction), follows the career of turn of the century photographer Edward S. Curtis and his quest to photograph the western tribes of North America. He is also the author of several collections of short fiction and a pair of novellas published under the title The Fires. He is the co-editor with Nicholas Delbanco of Talking Horse: Bernard Malamud on Life and Art, and co-author with Delbanco of Literature: Craft & Voice, a major newly published introduction to college literary study, and also the co-editor of Writers Workshop in a Book: The Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction, and editor of Listening to Ourselves: Great American Short Fiction.
Cheuse's essays, short stories, and reviews have appeared in numerous places, such as The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, The Antioch Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and other venues. His essay collection, Listening to the Page, appeared in 2001. His collected travel essays came out in June 2009 under the title A Trance After Breakfast.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The light and vastness draw only those whose souls bleed., December 27, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Washington State) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Light Possessed: A Novel (Paperback)

Don't miss Rick Bass's Foreword. Then those who have lived in the East, been transplanted or at least traveled in the Southwest, fallen in love with the ochre and vermillion mix of color as it is beheld in New Mexican light, are those who will love the Georgia O'Keefeness of Alan Cheuse's story. The question of what is fact and what is fiction haunts the reader all the way through. I would remind the reader to accept the story for what it is rather than comparing what seem to be facts to the real life of the famous painter. Cheuse has sensitively captured the various voices of the characters who narrate. A bit slow-going at first, the pace picks up until the reader is pulled into the passion in spite of the seeming objectivity of the narrative style. Having been to the home of Georgia O'Keefe, and having reclaimed my soul that wandered there ahead of my visit, reading the novel was like returning home. I cannot help but wonder how a reader who has not experienced that "light possessed" can appreciate Cheuse's description of the Blue Mesa.