A kunstlerroman, told, at least initially, as if it were a cartoon, using as few details as possible and yet creating a picture of real, vivid characters.
Illustrated with line drawings of life models, it is narrated in the past tense and from the third person PoV of the protagonist Cricket, a young man artist from a humble background who wants to be an artist and imagines his talent will be spotted and he will be whisked off to become an apprentice to a master. It's a lot harder than that, especially since he is determined to stay true to his artistic principles, his metier being classical life drawing.
He's a pure sort of lad, quiet and self-contained, and as a child he encounters and falls in love with the slightly older Olympia, his exact opposite, an exuberant girl bursting with ideas which pour out of her mouth. She too wants to work in the art world, perhaps as the curator of a gallery. Their lives are destined to be intertwined, meeting at intervals (a bit like the novel structure in One Day by David Nicholls but not so regular). He's in love with her but she's in love with life, the world, so many different people, and he is jealous, he can't cope with this: “She was not one person, she was multitudes. Her heart had a thousand doors, and all were open.” (part 4)
It is, as life itself is, a bittersweet story, beautifully written. I fell in love with all the main characters and was desperately rooting for Cricket to have a happy ending.
When I was researching my novel Bally and Bro, I read a number of novels and books about art, but not this one. I wish I had. I learned more about how an artist thinks and feels than from any of the others. And more about drawing and painting, too.
Selected quotes:
- “She had arranged an apple, a banana, and a bunch of green grapes that spilled over the edge of the bowl like bubbles overflowing from a tub.” (Part 1)
- “Much of the rightness of a drawing ... came through time and diligence and discernment. It came from work and humility - being able to recognize if something is wrong, and knowing how to address it. There was room for talent ... but he was surprised by the role of sheer doggedness.” (Part 2)
- “A music student would learn Bach, and the constraints would be severe - to play these notes in this order, at this tempo - but even then, there could be feeling. There could be style. The individual player could emerge, even through the strict rules of the composition.” (Part 2)
- “She ... laughed a thunderclap laugh. Her laugh had its own echo.” (Part 2)
- “Art was remembering, documenting. Spending a day recording a day and thus freezing time." (part 2)
- “With his greasy jeans and western style button-down, it was unclear if he had anything to do with the school, or if he was a farmhand who’d gotten lost.” (Part 3)
- “You have been fed the lie that intent is achievement. It is not. You have been fed the lie that explaining your ideas is the same as realizing them. It is not. You have been fed the lie that people enjoy looking at theories and gags and pranks. They do not.” (part 3)
- “A great composition will still work upside down.” (part 3)
- “The happiest people, in every society and every era, were those who created things, but without ambition. The people who make belts, vases, toys. You bring something new into the world, like a god, but without the human need to be recognized for it.” (part 3)
- “There's this unique selfishness built into the mythology of the modern artist. There's this notion that the best art is the most so-called personal and is deaf to its audience. ... You and I both know that very often the most personal work is absolute trash. It can be personal, but it also has to be good.” (Part 3)
- “What young man's death has meaning?” (part 3)
- “He knew it was bad. Worse than bad. Anything even approaching mediocrity could be praised reflexively. But the truly bad had stunned a viewer into silence.” (part 3)
- “The idea of creation was delicious, pure pleasure, while the execution of that idea was so often an unendurable slog ending in tragic disappointment.” (part 4)
- “Cricket stayed to watch the sky brightened to a filthy satin, a filthy yellow stained with the careless pollution of a species without shame.” (part 4)
- “I lost forty pounds. I look like a used condom.” (part 5)
- “He looked left and right, briefly a lost old man, and finally found the door and strode to it. He was not wearing jodhpurs or carrying a riding crop, but his gait indicated both.” (part 6)
- “‘You could have done much more.’ ‘Well, I didn't, and that's why I'm alive and content.’” (part 6)
- “I never thought we'd be so young at this age. There's so much time.” (part 6)
Zola's novel The Masterpiece is name-checked. Other books about art reviewed in this blog can be found on this page.
October 2026; 415 pages
Published in the US by Knopf and in the UK by Canongate in 2026
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