From the author of Low Tide and His Devils comes a brilliant novel about the high-flying New York art world of the late 1980s. When a brash young artist enters the lives of a couple of well-to-do patrons of the arts, the excessiveness of everything begins to threaten what is most dear to them.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The lives of rich folks dabbling in the New York art scene of the 1980s makes for surprisingly entertaining reading in When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth. Fernanda Eberstadt mines this fertile ground with fierce and funny results. Her cast of characters: Alfred Gebler, a poor boy who made good by marrying an heiress with a passion for the avant-garde; Dolly Gebler, daughter of a Midwestern pharmaceutical mogul who inculcated his favorite child with the view that obscene wealth requires penance--preferably in the form of a non-profit arts foundation; and Isaac Hooker, a young innocent from New Hampshire: painter, Harvard drop-out, former soup-kitchen cook, and part-time framer who enters the Geblers' orbit with unpredictable results.
Half the pleasure of reading Eberstadt's novel is her masterful send-up of the patrons and poseurs who populated New York's overheated art scene during the Reagan-Bush years; the other half is in the unsentimental, yet sympathetic portrayal of her main characters. Frequently funny, always penetrating, When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth offers a delightful journey into a world most of us only experience through the pages of glossy magazines.
From Library Journal
In this panoramic portrait of the volatile New York art scene of the 1980s, Eberstadt reprises the hero of her last novel, Isaac and His Devils (LJ 3/15/91). Isaac Hooker, a New Hampshire-born Harvard graduate adrift in the big city, unexpectedly discovers a natural talent for painting. Almost immediately, he is taken under the wing of the Aurora Foundation, an organization that sponsors and promotes emerging artists. The foundation is the brainchild of the immensely wealthy Gebler family, and before long Isaac is deeply entangled in the Geblers' personal lives. Eberstadt uses the figure of the principled country bumpkin as a foil to highlight the excesses and absurdities of the art business and of New York high society. This interesting and well-written blend of art criticism and social commentary presented in a Dallas-style soap-opera format will appeal mainly to readers with some knowledge of the late 20th-century art world. For larger fiction collections.?Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch., Los Angeles
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A meandering semi-satiric novel that eventually won me over.,
By A Customer
This review is from: When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth (Hardcover)
Reading this novel is like walking through a gallery; Eberstadt introduces many characters and points of view, until I eventually found the aspects that really intrigued and ultimately satisfied me. While the story contains no real surprises, it still managed to surprise me in its rich and loving detail. She obviously knows and loves New York. I was held at arms length from most of her characters until Isaac and Dolly came into focus during the second half of the book, but the set-up was not an entirely frustrating ride. Her ability to balance satire with a love for her characters held up from start to finish, and that is the most impressive aspect from my experience of reading this novel
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Maximal over-writing...,
By A Customer
This review is from: When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth (Hardcover)
It is a grand thing to be beautiful, young and rich. That statement has nothing to do with Ms. Eberstadt's novel. That's her. I read this book after being misinformed that it reflected something in fiction of the facts around Jean-Michel Basquiat's life. Well, Isaac - Ms. Eberstadt's vaporous lead character in this novel - is nothing like Basquiat neither in his physical description (Isaac is a lumbering, blond, blue-eyed New Hampshire farm boy) nor in his art (as described in her novel, Isaac's paintings are as overworked as Ms. Eberstadt's fevered writing). This book is only worth reading if you don't have to work for a living.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of my Favorite Books,
By A Customer
This review is from: When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth (Hardcover)
A captivating look at New York City and the characters that made it what it was during the art boom of the 1980's this book was enjoyable, insightful, and knowledgeable. It read very quickly, and when I was finished, I wanted to pick it up and read it all over again.
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