Paint It Black: A Novel (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: care your own soul, ant powder, very sick girl, Josie Tyrell, Echo Park, Lola Lola (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Following the huge success of White Oleander, where Janet Fitch portrayed the coming-of-age of Astrid, a young girl placed in foster care after her mother murders a former lover and goes to prison for life, she has once again created an indelible portrait of a young woman in Paint it Black. Josie Tyrell is a teenage runaway, an artist's model, and an habitué of the '80s LA punk rock scene. She is a white trash escapee from Bakersfield, having left a going nowhere life there. Now, sex, drugs and rock n' roll inform her days and nights. Paint it Black is the perfect title choice because Josie's lover is never coming back, as the song says.

Josie meets Michael Faraday, son of concert pianist Meredith Loewy and writer Calvin Faraday, long divorced. He is everything that she is not: refined, wealthy, well-traveled, brilliant by fits and starts. He is also a Harvard dropout, leaving school so he can paint; his new obsession. He refuses help from his mother, who is furious about his decision to leave school, but it doesn't bother him to have Josie working three jobs to support them. He is given to black moods, frozen in amber by his perfectionism, contemptuous of those who do not agree with him about art and life. Josie adores him. One day much like any other, he leaves their house, saying that he is going to his mother's so that he can paint in solitude. Instead, he goes to a motel in 29 Palms and shoots himself in the head.

What follows is days of watching Josie in a near fugue state from grief, drugs, booze, and going over and over her love for Michael, trying to grasp how he could do what he did. After all, didn't they share the "true world," Michael's characterization of their cocoon of love and exclusivity?

Meredith calls her and says, "Why are you alive? What is the excuse for Josie Tyrell? I ask you." Ultimately, they form a tenuous relationship, because all that is left of Michael lives in the two women. Josie even lives with Meredith for a while. When Meredith is ready to go on tour again, she asks Josie to go to Europe with her. Before she can do that, she must go to 29 Palms and try to understand, finally, why Michael's depression pushed him over the edge. That puzzle is not solved, nor can it be, but the end of the story is a hopeful, upbeat, new beginning. Janet Fitch has beaten the curse of the sophomore slump with this dynamite second novel. --Valerie Ryan

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Fitch follows her bestselling debut, White Oleander, by revisiting the insidious effects of a powerful, narcissistic mother on an only child. Michael Faraday is a Harvard dropout who paints in the L.A. art world of 1981; his suicide happens a few pages in, and sets the stage for a Fitch's masterful shifts in time and perspective. Josie Tyrell, an artist's model and denizen of the punk rock, had an intense relationship with Michael, but never managed to free him from his mother, renowned concert pianist Meredith Loewy, who moves in a bleak, loveless world of wealth and privilege. Yet their very different loves for Michael bring about a surprising alliance between the imperious Meredith and Josie, a white trash escapee whose inborn grace, style and sense of self sustain her—along with art, music and alcohol. The two find unexpected comfort in each other's shared loss, allowing Fitch to contrast the inner and outer resources of women whose lives couldn't be more different, and to flash back deeply into their histories. Fitch excels at painting a negative personality with sure-handed depth and fairness, and her prose penetrates the inner lives of the two with immediacy and bite. In Josie, she has created an indomitable young woman whose pluck and growing self-awareness beautifully offset Meredith's emptiness. Their relationship transforms a big cliché—the artist's suicide—into a page-turning psychodrama. (Sept.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (September 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316182745
• ISBN-13: 978-0316182744
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (141 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #404,461 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "With Flowers and My Love Both Never to Come Back", June 14, 2008

By	D. West "Bones" (Boise, Idaho United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Paint It Black: A Novel (Paperback)

Paint it Black was a much-anticipated book after my love affair with White Oleander. I still believe in Janet Fitch's ability to weave a tale that is mesmerizing and her endings are perhaps, in my mind, her greatest strength. Although I was at least a 1/3 of the way through the novel before it really captured my soul; when it finally took root, I was a captive until the end.

There was a lot in this book including the language, the sexual escapades, the drugs and the squalor of the lifestyles that did not immediately appeal to me. There were even times I felt some of the language or sexual descriptions went over the top. But, on reflection, that's what this entire novel does. It goes over the top and allows us, the reader, to peer into the dark underbelly of a lifestyle we may never otherwise encounter or wish to encounter. It's dysfunctional characters ring with authenticity, the abrasive language is all too real, and the plot goes down like poison.

Again, Fitch has managed to construct a startlingly original tale with fresh characters that crackle with their own dysfunctions and humanity. Fitch has a very good handle on writing about young women and the mother figures in their lives, as well as the love interests who permeate her stories. This novel again touches on the unequal power struggle between two women. Meredith is older. rich and famous, while Josie is young and barely making it in the squalor of the punked-out underbelly of the 80s of LA. Both are in love with one man--Meredith's son Michael; both feel they alone know him, yet ultimately neither of them can save nor possess him. The more Josie learns about Michael after his death, the more she feels betrayed and confused. But instead of burying her confusion in something beautiful as Meredith does with her concert tour, (Beauty said there was something more than just one f____ thing after another." ) Josie allows time to rest for a moment and stop all that senseless motion and as she retraces Michael's last days she takes on his mantle, uncovers her own truth at Twentynine Palms and begins to live again.

Fitch proves herself a master manipulator as she gracefully twists the plot and characters in versatile ways that will keep you wondering what the ending will bring. It ultimately had me cheering as Josie chose the right path for herself, instead of taking the easy way out that may have tempted a lesser soul.

Fitch paints the tragedy of loss with such pain and sadness that you can literally feel what the characters must have endured, even if you can't picture yourself in the setting. How does Josie keep Michael alive--well she attempts to keep Michael alive by believing and rescuing someone else who is in a great deal of pain and she becomes for Wilma what Michael has been for her--a muse?? Perhaps.

It was hard for me not to compare this book to White Oleander, which remains one of my favorites, but this work definitely stands on its own and is worth the read. It is a finely structured story of madness and love, darkness and eccentricity, love and friendship, in an atypical LA setting that I've not seen much written about in quite this way. This book is dark, but it brings light. It's sad but it brings hope. It was definitely thought provoking and I would highly recommend it to readers.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Paint it Black Disappoints , April 3, 2007

By	Jane Eyre "Born in the Wrong Century" (USA) - See all my reviews

Paint it Black is the second novel from Janet Fitch. It concerns one Josie Tyrell, a twenty year old model and actor from the wrong side of the tracks who falls in love with Michael Loewry, artist, Harvard drop-out, and son of a world-famous concert pianist. Michael commits suicide, and the entire novel concerns the fall out as Josie copes with his death and becomes involved with his wildly moody mother Meredith, pianist extraordinaire. Meredith hates Josie and blames her for her son's death, and their relationship is strange, needy, and compulsive.

Fitch is a gifted writer capable of wresting great beauty from the English language. Unfortunately, this book did not have the depth of characterization found in White Oleander, her first (and quite fabulous) book. The pace is very slow, the characters are not as interesting, and very little happens other than Josie's attempt to deal with her boyfriend's suicide.

Fitch is very interested in artists and their lives, and Josie and Michael are both budding artists. She is clearly a cultured writer, but this often comes across as pretentious, something I noted other reviewers having an issue with. While I think PIB is worth reading because of Fitch's skills as a writer, I don't think it comes near to the wonder that was White Oleander. In comparison to that book, which was so often moving and profound, PIB seems a poor second, a sophomoric effort from a writer capable of much more.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars of course it's depressing..., March 6, 2007

By	A. Hughes "human" (location) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

..the person she loved just committed suicide. I wonder why anyone bothered complaining that the book was so sad. That aside, I enjoyed this book. I think it started off a little bit slow and it felt to me like maybe the author was having somewhat of a hard time finding the voice of her character in the beginning. I also noticed that in the beginning, there were LOTS of musical references. Not just "she picked up a record" or something, but long lists of band names. I was minorly annoyed by it, but that fell away pretty quickly.

I do have another small complaint. It really bothered me that Josie called smirnoff "smirny" or "voddy," and cigarettes "ciggies". I think it was supposed to show that she felt a strange affection for the substances, but it still irritated me.

**minor spoiler ahead**
overall, it was a good book. I loved how Meredith's character sort of forced Josie to face everything that happened, to make decisions and ultimately choose not to run away like she had before, but to start taking care of and learning about herself. I liked the way in which Josie came to her revelation at the end of the book, and the hint of new beginning. Josie's narrative (albeit third person, not first person) stuck in my head for a few days after I read it. That, to me, is a sign of a well-written character.

Don't not read this book if you're depressed-- just don't read this book if you can't handle a realistic story about an emotional journey in the aftermath of suicide.