Hardcover, 384 pages
English language
Published Nov. 14, 2014 by Hamish Hamilton.
This is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths, and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real - and all life's givens get given a second chance.
I guess this just wasn't my kind of book. It did not hold my interest at all. I kept going until the end, though, hoping that there would be some payoff to make it all worthwhile, but no such luck.
Most other people seem to like it, though, so don't let me stop you from reading and enjoying this one.
