Fiona Davis: The Masterpiece, Dutton, (Penguin Random House USA), 9781524742973, paperback

(German Edition: Wege ihrer Sehnsucht, 19. September 2019, Goldmann, Paperback

 

Summer time for me is often a time for light hearted reading. What attracted me to Fiona Davis “The Masterpiece” was her being inspired by two facts for this novel:  the artist Helen Dryden who was one of the most well paid female illustrators and industrial designers in 1920 and 30ties New York when female artist hardly had any recognition and the Supreme Court’s ruling to declare the Grand Central Terminal in New York a landmark saving it from developers. I had no idea there had actually been a  famous art school housed in the terminal, the Grand Central School of Art, which was founded by painters John Singer Sargent, Walter Leighton Clark and Edmund Greacen.

Davis’s novel “The Masterpiece” has two story lines: 1920ties and 1930 New York and 1974 with two strong female characters at its heart.   Clara Darden whose character is based on Helen Dryden using fictional liberties, is a teacher for illustrations at the Grand Central School of Art when magazines only used illustrators  before the event of photography. She is determined to make her way as a serious artist even if it means having no money and  going to bed hungry at night. Through a stroke of luck she meets Oliver whose admiration and advances she happily gives into. His family connections help her breaking out into the New York art world landing her a job as a highly paid illustrator at Vogue.  Clara’s artistic friendship with Levon Zakarian, a successful painter and fellow teacher at the art school, who originally started out being rival slowly turns into something more intimate and she finds herself being torn between two men.  But when the Great Depression of the 1929 hits, everyone’s life is tragically altered.

In 1974 Virginia Clay, a new divorcee, is trying to find her bearings after a severe illness and being traded in for a less flawed woman by her husband.    Never having had to work as a lawyer’s wife she finds the only job she can land is at the information booth of the Grand Central Station terminal which barely covers supporting herself and her teenage daughter Ruby. By sheer accident she discovers the closed off section of the former art school and is fascinated by a stunning watercolor she finds which has obviously been left behind.  Trying to find out more about the art school and  who the artist in question gives her a new purpose in life. When she and her coworkers learn that the fading beauty of what  once was a  glorious Grand Central station has brought developers on the plan who are eager to tear down the building for their own gain, Virginia gets involved to save this historic landmark.

I had great fun reading Fiona Davis' well-crafted “The Masterpiece” which will appeal to readers who are interested in historical fiction set in the world of art with a light mystery as a backdrop.  

Lara Prescott: The Secrets we kept, 9781786331670, Cornerstone, Penguin Random House UK, C format paperback, pub date September 5, 2019

I can barely believe that “The Secrets we kept” is Lara Prescott’s first novel. Her superbly reimagined story is based on facts around the publication of one of the most well-known books in literature, Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago” for which he won the Nobel Prize.

Alternating between the seemingly invisible women in the CIA’s typing pool, two female agents, Irina and Sally, and Pasternak and his family in Russia, this captvating story around a literary masterpiece kept me firmly in its grip. The chapters set in Russia around Boris Pasternak and his mistress Olga Iwinskaja are my favourites, they touched me the most.

I was completely oblivious to the fact of the  CIA’s involvement in using the publication of “Doktor Schivago” as is the title in German and literature as such as a weapon against the Russians during the cold war, something which was only recently brought to life when documents were declassified. As someone who has worked in publishing almost her entire life, I was absolutely fascinated by this marvelous tale and was equally ignorant andshocked that Olga, Pasternak’s agent and lifelong mistress, was punished to several years of labour in Gulags paying the ultimate price for loving Pasternak and helping the novel come to life.

Feltrinelli, the great Italian publisher, mastered the ultimate coup in getting the censored book out of Russia publishing it despite the danger it posed to the lives of the author and his loved ones, believing in the power of this masterpiece. "Go find me the next Russian Nobel Prize winner", he was rumored to have said to his scouting agent and so he did.

I do not want to go too deeply into details of the book around the publication of “Doctor Zhivago” as it would spoil the entire pleasure of reading this vividly constructed novel about one of literature’s great classics, a book Stalin and his successors were so deeply afraid of banning from publication in Russia. I urge you to buy a copy of “The Secrets we kept” and promise you a page turning read once it comes out September 5th.

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.

 

 

Casey Cep: Furious Hours – Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee,

W. Heinemann/ Random House UK, 9781785150746, paperback

 

“Furious Hours” is a fascinating mixture of a book:  true crime reporting  about the murders of an alleged serial killer, the Reverend Willie Maxwell, his very own murder, his  lawyer ‘s Big Tom Radney’s  role in this Alabama drama. And last but not least bibliographical reportage of Harper Lee’s life (the reclusive author of “To Kill a Mockingbird" and childhood friend of Truman Capote) unearthing the last known research activities for a book she saw but was unable to write after having spent years of research on  Reverend Maxwell.  

This book reads like a thriller but is also a portrait of Alabama, the South and a biography of Harper Lee’s peculiar life.  I would say it is beneficial to have an interest in the author Harper Lee as 25 % of the book is about her, her research of this case and her plight to write a second bestseller after the gigantic success of “To Kill a Mockingbird”. 

“Furious Hours” opens with the thriller element of the book.  Several relatives including two wives of the African- American Reverend Maxwell are found dead, all having died under suspicious circumstances.  Law enforcement treated Maxwell as a suspect but is unable to nail him to any of these deaths.  What turned him into a key suspect is the fact that he had taken out life insurance on all these people unbeknownst to them, something that could be done years ago, making him the sole beneficiary in case of death.  Reading about the investigations into these deaths, one is speechless that no one could pin Maxwell down to these murders despite him having more than one motive.  Enter Tom Radney, his lawyer and a gregarious Alabama politician who defended him brilliantly in all these trials.  When one of the grieving relatives takes justice into his own hands, Tom Radney switches roles without blinking an eye ending up defending Reverend Maxwell’s killer.  These chapters alone make this book a mind boggling read.

I had read Marja Mills book “The Mockingbird Next Door”  about her friendship with Harper Lee and her sisters  a few years ago and was astonished to learn from Casey Cep that there had indeed been the start of a second book for Lee, not counting her original version of the Mockingbird, “Go Set a Watchman”, which was originally dropped but published after her death. Harper Lee dug deep and painstakingly into the Reverend Maxwell’s case, spending years of interviewing people associated with him and even living in Alexander City for some time to conduct her investigation.  She amassed tons of material but after years of trying to write “The Reverend” as she called the work in progress, she gave up and the book never materialized.

Casey Cep has done some very extensive, deep digging herself to come up with this mesmerizing story.  Hats off to her, I was absolutely fascinated by her discoveries and the stories she had to tell.

Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott: Swan Song, 9781473543935. Hutchinson/ Penguin Random House UK,paperback available July 2019: 9781786090188

No German edition currently (I hope rights have been sold to Germany)

Truman Capote, the literary genius, bad boy and chameleon of the 1950, 60 and 70ties, provided enough material for several novels during his excessive life.  I read Melanie Benjamin’s “The Swans of 5th Avenue” last year and had a blast with her gossipy, sparkling, entertaining novel.  When I heard of Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott’s novel “Swan Song” which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019, I just knew I had to read her version of Truman’s tragic relationship with his swans.

Both novels are excellent but different in their prose reimagining Truman Capotes life and that of his swans. “Swan Song” is the more extensive one with 480 pages and the more literary but just as juicy, gossipy and easy to read.  The author switches back and forth between Truman’s voice and that of his “swans” – the stunning grand dames of jet set society during their time:  Babe Paley, Slim Keith, C.Z. Guest, Gloria Guinness, Lee Radziwill and Marella Agnelli.  Their glamorous lives and friendships were shared with unimaginable luxuries, gossipy, boozy lunches in the eating temples of New York, dream like summer vacations on yachts  in the Aegean or Yucatan, Babe’s beautiful meticulously planned dinners and of course Lee’s access to the Kennedys and Onassis families.  Not to mention Truman's famous black and white ball which went into the history books.

They all revealed their most private thoughts and troubles to Truman who in return showered them with the love, attention and affection most of them lacked from their philandering, rich husbands.  He would never betray them unlike their husbands of that they were sure despite Truman’s increasing dependence on alcohol and pills which eventually lead to his ruin.  So what in the world made him betray their love and trust publishing a piece in Esquire with thinly vailed names based on his swan’s lives spilling the beans of their most intimate secrets? The chapters in the novel about the consequences of his actions are exquisite.  Greenberg-Jephcott is brilliant in imagining Truman’s and the swans’ emotional rollercoaster after him being banned from their lives, the years that followed after his betrayal and loss of their friendship, all closely based on biographical data.

“Swan Songs” transported me into a fascinating re-imagined world of a literary yet emotionally crippled genius and his court of beautiful, rich and unusual women. I loved it,   5 stars from me!