Catherine Cusset: Life of David Hockney, Other Press, New York, 9781590519837, paperback original, available

 

David Hockney is one of my favorite contemporary artists whose endless creativity and exploration of all artistic expressions be it acrylic, watercolor, oil, Polaroid’s, camera obscura, iPod drawings etc. never fail to amaze me.  When a friend from publishing brought me the proof of Catherine Cusset’s “Life of David Hockney”, a novel but very close to his actual biography, I thought to myself whether it was at all desirable to write such a book.  Should one not stick to the biography of living artists? The author herself even questions this but wrote it as homage to Hockney; she imagined feelings, dialogues and thoughts.  To make a long story short, I was very taken with this wonderful little book,   Catherine Cussets pulls it off with grace and vivid prose.  Her research was meticulous and she even met David Hockney after her French original was published to present him with this book.  He doesn’t seem to have minded this novel at all. It is a fascinating overview of David’s artistic and personal life.  He was openly gay early on and like many suffered loss, illness and heartbreak,  losing very close friends to the Aids outbreak.  His life has been split between California, London and Yorkshire where his family lived for many years inspiring him to create some of his greatest work.  If you are interested in David Hockney or are a close follower of his work like I am, I highly recommend this novel.

Sara Paretsky: Critical Mass, Berkeley (Penguin Random House USA) 9780451468185, paperback

(German Edition available as hardback "Kritische Masse, Ariadne Verlag)

  
Having ditched a novel in frustration after 200 pages, which one shall remain unnamed, I needed to return to safer author ground and a thriller it had to be. Sara Paretsky has been delivering excellent novels with gutsy female private investigator V.I. Warshawki  at their heart for years and an arm chair trip to my beloved Chicago sounded great.  I read a review rating her latest book “Critical Mass” with 5 stars; I can second that, she kept me glued.  How Paretsky pulls off writing about the complicated matter of nuclear physics  as well as stringing together a complicated  567 pages plot with numerous protagonists and historical details has my absolute admiration.  The thriller takes many twists and turns until finally racing to a satisfying ending.

Dr. Lotty Herschel, V.I.’s dear motherly friend in Chicago, had to flee the Holocaust 1937 via the kinder transport from Vienna to England and finally ended in Chicago as an adult where she became a highly regarded medical doctor. One of her childhood friends, Kitty Sagnior Binder, whom she fell out with later, fled with her leaving behind Kitty’s mother Martina who as a single mother was one of the most talented female physicists in Austria having been forced to work in a Nazi nuclear project.  Both Kitty and Lotty’s families perished in the Holocaust.  Kitty’s only daughter Judy had become a drug addict and dealer but when Lotty receives a desperate call from her fearing for her life but leaving no contact details, she hires Warshawki to find her.  Judy had abandoned her only child Martin as a baby leaving him with her mother Kitty. As a teenager the boy showed an exceptional scientific mind much like his lost great Jewish grandmother.  VI has an unpleasant conversation with paranoid Kitty finding her in a house with high security alarms and scared to death of unknown intruders.  She also learns that Martin, an adult now, has disappeared from his work at a computer company and has been missing  ever since.  Kitty’s seemingly unreasonable fear soon turns into deadly reality and VI becomes embroiled in chase that has its origin in Nazi Germany with some very high powered people unafraid of using all means to protect their secrets and wealth.

Jeanne Mackin: The Last Collection – A novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel,  Berkley US/ Penguin Random House, 9780593099339, paperback

 

Summer time, fun reading and Jeanne Mackin’s “The Last Collection - A novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel” hit the spot, especially since Frankfurt seems to have turned into the tropics for a few weeks. The book is historically well researched, also of the war years in Paris; a fascinating escapist read for the ladies, loved it.

I personally have always been more interested in Elsa Schiaparelli; she was the more positive, inspired and artistic of the two designers with a leaning towards Surrealism which she often applied to her fashion.  Schiap as she called herself was the opposite of Coco Chanel who was cool, arrogant, calculating and somewhat dictatorial leaving her workers often in tears.  She was also known to be leaning towards fascism befriending some high ranking Nazi officials before the occupation of Paris.  Hans Günther von Dincklage, the head of Hitler’s propaganda and press department, was rumoured to have been her lover granting her access to new German clients who were crazy about her perfume and elegant fashion.  Schiap in turn leaned more towards communism and socialism, detested the Nazi’s, housing refugees in her home  and was known to pay more than fair wages to her seamstresses.

The novel is centered on Lily Sutter, a very sympathetic young widow and budding artist. Visiting her brother Charlie in 1938 Paris, she gets entangled between the two rival designers when her brother insists on buying her a first couture dress to cheer her up.  Charlie, a promising medical doctor is in love with Ania, a stunningly beautiful, socially well connected woman who is stuck in an arranged marriage to an influential rich merchant. Charlie is unable to convince Ania to leave her husband as he keeps refusing to agree to a divorce or to give up their daughter.   Ania’s impeccable taste and money gains her unlimited access to both Chanel and Schiaparelli.  Lily gets caught up very quickly in Paris politics and fashion through her friendship to Ania and Schiaparelli who has struck up a friendship with the young woman offering her a job in her store.  Visiting Chanel’s salon on Schiaparelli's order, Lily meets and is strangely attracted to Otto, the attaché and driver to Hans Günther von Dincklage, a high ranking Nazi officer Chanel is trying to charm and gain as her lover eventually succeeding.  The looming threat of a World War II and it’s finally outbreak affects the lives of everyone tragically and brings Chanel and Schiaparelli’s rivalry to a head.

Mackin is an engaging storyteller, she created a very colorful novel  with such sympathetic protagonists as Charlie, Ania, Lily, Otto and the two famous fashion icons, I desperately  wanted to know what happened to them and learned a great deal about the world of Paris fashion in the Thirties as a side benefit.