The Painting [Hardcover]

Nina Schuyler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 22, 2004

In 1869 Japan, a young woman escapes the confines of her arranged marriage by painting memories of her lover on mulberry paper. She secretly wraps the painting around a ceramic pot that's bound for Europe. In France, a disenchanted young man works as a clerk at an import shop. When he opens the box from Japan, he discovers the brilliant watercolor of two lovers locked in an embrace under a plum tree. He steals the painting and hides it in his room. With each viewing, he sees something different, and gradually the painting transforms him.

Set outside the new capital of Tokyo during the Meiji Restoration and in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, The Painting is a richly imagined story of four characters whose lives are delicately and powerfully entwined: Ayoshi, the painter, pines for her lover as she dutifully attends to her husband; Ayoshi's husband, Hayashi, a government official who's been disfigured in a deadly fire, has his own well of secret yearnings; Jorgen, wounded by the war and by life, buries himself in work at the Paris shop; and the shop owner's sister, Natalia, who shows Jorgen the true message of the painting.

Exquisitely written and utterly spellbinding, The Painting reveals the enduring effect of art in ordinary life and marks the debut of a skilled stylist and first-rate storyteller.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A host of brittle characters populate this oblique historical novel, set in two very different locations at the same moment in history: Tokyo during the Meiji Restoration and Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. Debut author Schuyler tenuously connects these settings when Ayoshi, a frantically unhappy young Japanese woman who seeks to escape her hated arranged marriage by painting memories of her old lover, sends off a painting wrapped around one of her husband's ceramic bowls. The bowls make their way to Paris, where the painting is discovered by Jorgen, a disabled mercenary soldier from Denmark sitting out the remainder of the war as a merchant's assistant. As miserable as Ayoshi, Jorgen finds himself drawn against his will to his boss's bastard sister Natalia, who has signed up to become a woman soldier. The novel shuttles back and forth between Japan and Paris, but Schuyler never develops a compelling reason to link the two periods, either in plot or in theme. The historical tragedies of Paris and Japan remain stubbornly separate, just as the characters remain unreachable, too caught up in their own webs of misery to become fully alive on the page. Schuyler opts to forgo traditional punctuation, which lends her prose a spare poetic sensibility, and relief comes from moments of almost haiku-like beauty ("She's like a slice of the moonlight") that break through the gloom.
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From Booklist

Art is both seductress and salve in this iridescent first novel set in late-nineteenth-century Japan and France. Desperately unhappy in her arranged marriage, young, beautiful Ayoshi retreats to her studio, where she paints erotic watercolors of a former lover. The vibrant portraits are worlds away from the colorless life she shares with her husband, Hiyashi, a government official and potter who sells his wares overseas. Ayoshi secretly wraps one of her creations around a ceramic vase bound for Europe, where it is discovered by Jorgen, a Paris merchandise shop employee who lost his leg--and his idealism--fighting in the Franco-Prussian war. The radiant image gradually transforms the jaded young Dane, prompting him to pursue brave, blue-eyed Natalia, who is determined to become a soldier. Schuyler laces her lean, lyrical prose with nuanced images of nature: the morning's "faint peach glow," " a twig of cherry blossoms, its pale pink flowers, delicate, like a newborn." A cast of secondary characters, many with their own dark secrets, adds depth and dimension to this engrossing debut. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books (October 22, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565124413
• ISBN-13: 978-1565124417
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,014,637 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Nina Schuyler is the author of the award-winning novel, "The Painting," which was named by the San Francisco Chronicle as a Best Book for 2004 and by MSNBC as a "fearless debut." She earned her undergraduate degree at Stanford University, a law degree at Hastings College of the Law, and a MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. She is currently working on another novel. She teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco.

That's the short version.

A longer version: For many years, the idea of writing fiction intimidated me. (The Greats staring down with disapproval). As a girl, I read all the time. But I didn't write. I kept a spy log. My favorite book was Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. I spied on my sisters. My mother. My father. I wrote things down. K got a bad grade and stuffed her report card behind her stinky pink socks. L licks her lips when she talks about chocolate. D's breath smells like salami. Why? WHY!!!

Eventually I found the classics in BIG PRINT and read them all. Of course when I was older, I had to reread them because I didn't remember a thing. I became a newspaper reporter, a magazine writer, a greeting card designer, a fitness instructor, a painting teacher, a tennis coach, an investment banker, a lawyer, (not in this order), and then, I wrote a short story. Then many short stories and went to San Francisco State University to earn an MFA. I wrote a novel that will remain forever in a drawer and then another novel, The Painting. And I'm finishing another novel and I suppose there will be another and another.

I still keep a spy log.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story of how love can heal and liberate a soul, October 29, 2004

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Painting (Hardcover)

Hayashi has feared fire ever since fire took the lives of his family and permanently disfigured his feet. A talented potter who was raised by Buddhist monks, he is a part of the new Japanese government, even though his heart isn't completely into it. He keeps the now-illegal Buddhist shrine on his property open, even though someone set fire to his teahouse, possibly as a warning. Similarly, he can't make out what's going on in the mind of his beautiful young wife, Ayoshi.

Ayoshi is dreamy, sometimes spending hours upon hours painting things she rarely lets him see. She feels a great distance between herself and the man the matchmaker married her to. Though she feels bad about it, she resents his deformity, the fact that she has to massage his feet while soaking them in ice water to calm their pain. She cannot find space for him in her heart --- it is too full with the desire to paint the world she sees, especially the memories of her beautiful lover, who she misses deeply. When she paints the first painting, the passion of her muse pours perfectly out into the paper, capturing a moment of lust and profound love and joy. She cannot let her husband see this work, so she wraps it around one of the pots he has sold and is sending to France.

In France, Jorgen is the one who discovers the painting. Once a solider hired from his homeland of Denmark to fight in the place of a rich Frenchman, the loss of his leg has forced him to leave the army he feels so much at home in. He happened to be billeted in the hospital next to a young man whose sister, Natalia, visited constantly, and, in return for a small act of kindness on Jorgen's part, she has convinced her other brother to hire him to sort and unpack things in his warehouse. She also convinces him to help her learn how to shoot and be a real solider, for Natalia's one desire is to be a truly good person, a hero, someone who, along with the other women who are training to become soldiers, fights for her homeland.

The painting is, in many ways, the pivotal event of the story. It is love and desire melted and pressed to paper, a form of release for a trapped young woman, a tool for healing for a similarly trapped man. Every time he looks at the painting, Jorgen sees something new; it is not that the painting is magic (though beauty and the capturing of a perfect moment has a magic all its own), but that Jorgen changes. As he transforms, falling in love with the almost saintly Natalia, he becomes a better person and is able to see different things. Natalia also changes as she faces loss and sees the realities of war. The way she and her fellow female soldiers are treated isn't what she expected, but strangely enough, she still finds a sort of liberation. Ayoshi and Hayashi also change; Hayashi's struggles to understand and try to find a common place with his wife are heartbreaking, as are Ayoshi's attempts to find herself.

THE PAINTING is extremely well written. Nina Schuyler uses imagery to create subtle connections in the text. For instance, Hayashi, Ayoshi and a visitor see an owl. What each sees defines them perfectly. Hayashi sees, poetically, a slice of moonlight. Sato, who travels the world, sees an adventurer. Ayoshi says that none of them are right --- that the owl (she) is lost.

Schuyler also captures the heart of a city under siege. The Prussians are closing in on Paris, and the author brings us a picture of a place filled both with desperation and optimism, stripped of its facade. Pierre, the man who Jorgen works for, is only happy when he's squeezing the last penny from his clients, Jorgen himself runs minor cons to make money, and we see the realities --- the insides of the hospitals, the funerals, the doubts and the desperation that everyone feels as they prepare to defend their homes against a vastly impressive force.

Contrasting love against hopelessness --- a floundering marriage, a war --- THE PAINTING shows how love can heal and liberate the soul.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Lynn Speer

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, sensitive and thoughtful novel, February 3, 2005

By 

D.K.V. "faithfulheretic" (Santa Monica, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Painting (Hardcover)

I am impressed that this is the author's debut novel - as it reads as though written by a master storyteller of the highest level. The story itself is original and emotionally moving.
The author not only uncovered the worlds of 19th century Paris and Japan, but she gracefully uncovered the spirit of these cultures caught in historical change through the insight and thoughts of these wonderful, sensitive characters, who themselves undergo spiritual change.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SIMPLY EXQUISITE, November 15, 2004

By 

Book Lover (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Painting (Hardcover)

I'm not the type to write reviews, but I am the kind to recommend books, and I highly recommend this novel! It's rare when a writer combines beautiful sentences with compelling story, but Schuyler manages to do it. There are times I just had to pause on a beautiful sentence and let it sit there in my mind. And yet, there was the pull of the story-- actually two intertwined stories-- that are woven together through the themes of beauty, art, longing, desire.

In one story line- the Japanese-- desire begets beauty; in the France story line, beauty begets desire. Both stories, as I said, pull you in.

Color is also throughout the novel, and sensual details. Schuyler is quite adept at writing scenes that are so well imagined, so abundant with precise detail that you, too, as a reader slip easily into the late 19th century.