If you love Books that celebrate art you will certainly enjoy these gems. These are books that have stayed with me over the years and they embrace and celebrate art in all its glorious forms.
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
Synopsis
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur’s chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.
Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten’s arm is a line from Star Trek: “Because survival is insufficient.” But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.
Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.
My thoughts
What sets this book apart from many other speculative fiction novels, is the sense of hope the reader finds within its pages, that the cast of characters chooses to survive and to move forward in a new world by preforming the plays of William Shakespeare along with a troupe of musicians. They travel together, support one another and protect each other because their survival as a group and their need to perform depends upon it. Even though the world has gone through this drastic change, these characters have not completely lost touch with who they once were and demonstrate other people they encounter that the need to make art is like breathing and that art may be more important than ever.
Hag-Seed by Margret Atwood
Synopsis
Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he's staging a Tempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, it will heal emotional wounds.
Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And also brewing revenge.
After twelve years, revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Here, Felix and his inmate actors will put on his Tempest and snare the traitors who destroyed him. It's magic! But will it remake Felix as his enemies fall?
Margaret Atwood’s novel take on Shakespeare’s play of enchantment, retribution, and second chances leads us on an interactive, illusion-ridden journey filled with new surprises and wonders of its own.
My Thoughts
The Tempest by Shakespeare is complex character study of motivation and revenge. It was written late in his career and admittedly has never been a favorite of mine, however after reading Hag-seed I have gained a deeper understanding of the material and the motivations of the cast. Hag-seed is a play within a story and Atwood uses that play masterfully with her modern foils. i don't want to give to much away but if you enjoy the Tempest and Shakespeare, this will be an amusing and insightful read for you.
The Summer Prince by Ayla Dawn Johnson
Synopsis
The lush city of Palmares Tres shimmers with tech and tradition, with screaming gossip casters and practiced politicians. In the midst of this vibrant metropolis, June Costa creates art that's sure to make her legendary. But her dreams of fame become something more when she meets Enki, the bold new Summer King. The whole city falls in love with him (including June's best friend, Gil). But June sees more to Enki than amber eyes and a lethal samba. She sees a fellow artist.
Together, June and Enki will stage explosive, dramatic projects that Palmares Tres will never forget. They will add fuel to a growing rebellion against the government's strict limits on new tech. And June will fall deeply, unfortunately in love with Enki. Because like all Summer Kings before him, Enki is destined to die.
Pulsing with the beat of futuristic Brazil, burning with the passions of its characters, and overflowing with ideas, this fiery novel will leave you eager for more from Alaya Dawn Johnson.
My Thoughts
The setting of Palmares Tres is very well realized a wonderful blending of art and technology, where the citizens are free to express sexuality and art, provided you come from the right caste. The Description of the Matriarchal caste system in the novel is enlightening as much as it is horrifying, restrictive and overbearing to the main character, June. I like that June doesn't always make good decisions, she comes across as hot headed at times but this makes much more human to the reader. I would very much like to see Alya dawn Johnson continue June's story or place other books in this universe.
The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
Synopsis
On a dark road in the middle of the night, a car plunges into a ravine. The driver survives the crash, but his injuries confine him to a hospital burn unit. There the mysterious Marianne Engel, a sculptress of grotesques, enters his life. She insists they were lovers in medieval Germany, when he was a mercenary and she was a scribe in the monastery of Engelthal. As she spins the story of their past lives together, the man's disbelief falters; soon, even the impossible can no longer be dismissed. The Gargoyle is the mesmerizing story of one man's descent into personal hell and his quest for salvation.
The narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life. As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul.
A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love. He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.
My Thoughts
I enjoyed the influence art has within the novel, how the characters have been in love, in danger and sometimes even reversing roles in their past lives together. The book is very well researched in historical detail and not bogged down with it, the flow and balance are well done. It is also touching and turbulent love story between two very broken people that are trying to find their way out of the bonds that for centuries have held them captive.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Synopsis
Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love--and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.
My Thoughts
I will say this book is worth reading but i do not feel it is the end all or be all of epic art books. i saw one of the major plot points coming pretty early on, regarding the goldfinch painting itself and that was disappointing. I really am not quite sure why people gush and gush about this novel. Yes it is in the Dickensian tradition but many of the characters feel flat and gray to me, especially the Barber family. As an artist, I enjoyed all the references to furniture history and restoration techniques and the novel certainly did enlighten the reader on how the art world does indeed attract unscrupulous people and can have a seedy underbelly. I also enjoyed the relationship that Theo and his mother shared and her memory influence on him later on in life. He finds the father figure he desperately craves in his apprenticeship / partnership with Hobie. At times I really felt that the Los Vegas section of Theo's life could have been substantially edited down. The blackmailer, Lucius Reeve seemed like he would be a very threatening character at first, but then is underutilized by Tartt and by the end just sort of fizzles into nothing. He really could have added a heightened sense of danger for Theo and i wish Tartt had not just abandoned his agenda.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Synopsis
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
My Thoughts
I am currently reading this book and will update with my thoughts soon.
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Translated from the Turkish by Erda M Göknar
Synopsis
At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers.
The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed. The ruling elite therefore mustn’t know the full scope or nature of the project, and panic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears. The only clue to the mystery–or crime? –lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex and power.
In 16th-century Istanbul, master miniaturist and illuminator of books Enishte Effendi is commissioned to illustrate a book celebrating the sultan. Soon he lies dead at the bottom of a well, and how he got there is the crux of this novel. A number of narrators give testimony to what they know about the circumstances surrounding the murder. The stories accumulate and become more detailed as the novel progresses, giving the reader not only a nontraditional murder mystery but insight into the mores and customs of the time. In addition, this is both an examination of the way figurative art is viewed within Islam and a love story that demonstrates the tricky mechanics of marriage laws. Award-winning Turkish author Pamuk (The White Castle) creatively casts the novel with colorful characters (including such entities as a tree and a gold coin) and provides a palpable sense of atmosphere of the Ottoman Empire that history and literary fans will appreciate. Recommended.
- Marc Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., PA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
My Thoughts
Red is not a quick read, you need to be a active involved reader, it will demand your full attention, the reward is well worth it. If you love the rich world of Turkish illuminated manuscripts, flowing colors of silks, amazing architecture that is the lush backdrop within this murder mystery unfolds, you will enjoy all the historical and artistic details. The murder mystery is the central plot, very serious and involved, as a counterpoint, Pamuk gives the humorous and touching love story between Black and Shekure. The story is told through various chapters narrated by characters some dead (the victim), many living and several objects that have been given thought such as the color red, a drawing of horse and a drawing of a dog. This allows us to see the story from many different and often opposing viewpoints. Pamuk has full command of accurate historical detail and many manuscripts mentioned in the novel are real and many do still exist in whole or in part.
People of the book by Geraldine Brooks
Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author. Called "a tour de force"by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this priceless work, the series of tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding-an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair-only begin to unlock its deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics.
Late one night in the city of Sydney, Hanna Heath, a rare book conservator, gets a phone call. The Sarajevo Haggadah, which disappeared during the siege in 1992, has been found, and Hanna has been invited by the U.N. to report on its condition. In the present, we follow the resolutely independent Hanna through her thrilling first encounter with the beautifully illustrated codex and her discovery of the tiny signs - a white hair, an insect wing, missing clasps, a drop of salt, a wine stain-that will help her to discover its provenance. Along with the book she also meets its savior, a Muslim librarian named Karaman. Their romance offers both predictable pleasures and genuine surprises, as does the other main relationship in Hanna's life: her fraught connection with her mother.
In the other strand of the narrative we learn, moving backward through time, how the codex came to be lost and found, and made. From the opening section, set in Sarajevo in 1940, to the final section, set in Seville in 1480, these narratives show Brooks writing at her very best. With equal authority she depicts the struggles of a young girl to escape the Nazis, a duel of wits between an inquisitor and a rabbi living in the Venice ghetto, and a girl's passionate relationship with her mistress in a harem. Like the illustrations in the Haggadah, each of these sections transports the reader to a fully realized, vividly peopled world. And each gives a glimpse of both the long history of anti-Semitism and of the struggle of women toward the independence that Hanna, despite her mother's lectures, tends to take for granted. Brooks is too good a novelist to belabor her political messages, but her depiction of the Haggadah bringing together Jews, Christians and Muslims could not be more timely. Her gift for storytelling, happily, is timeless.
- Copyright 2007 Publishers Weekly
My Thoughts
This novel's prose are beautiful and imaginative with fully realized characters that you will truly fall in love. I couldn't put it down, yearning to know where the characters were going with "The Book" and how each of their deeply personal journeys would leave tiny little indelible clues upon its pages. Geraldine Brooks is a masterful storyteller and the story itself is relevant for the world issues of trying to accept and understand cultures different than our own and the thoughts and ideas that should connect us all.
I hope you will read and enjoy these titles as much as I did, if you have suggestions to add to the list please add a comment or suggestion below.
About Artist and Blogger - Amy Monthei
She is a legally blind artist that lives and creates artwork in her home-based studio in Honolulu, HI. She regularly shows and sells her work that has been commissioned by corporate and private clients throughout the United states. She is an avid reader and is often accompanied by her shadow, a nine year old wire Fox terrier named Mortimer.
Please contact us at:
Visualarts
275 Market Street Ste. 197
Minneapolis, MN 55405
612-677-1244
No comments:
Post a Comment