ONE WOMAN SHOW

The life of Caroline Margaret “Kitty” Brooks Whitaker is related entirely in the form of museum wall labels, as if she were a painting.

Coulson is a former writer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and here she endeavors to conjure a woman's life entirely through wall labels. The labels follow the variously cruel, obsessive, and disaffected Kitty from her gilded childhood in the early 1910s—when she's described as a “golden child, a delirious display of Bernini verve and unrivaled WASP artistry”—through several marriages and to her death. “A pretty thing entitled to pretty things,” Kitty wavers between reveling in the admiration and envy garnered by being a human objet d’art and her longing for freedom from the restraining gaze of others. Coulson is gifted at conveying astute observations through small, often humorous details: A supportive husband is compared to a “sterling silver knife rest” and small sandwiches are described as “an abstract portrait of caloric constraint” rendered with “Mondrian rigor.” Coulson’s innovative form is the perfect vehicle for her wry commentary on the conventions of art criticism, the complexities of seeing and being seen, and the desire for possession that is inherent in the art collections of the wealthy. The collecting of art on this scale, the novel seems to suggest, seems to tempt the collectors to see everything, even themselves and others, as objects made for consumption. Reading the novel effectively gives readers a sense of being held captive by the same forces that constrain Kitty. We observe and admire, but always with the sense that reality remains obscured by an excessively slick finish or a too-bright bit of gold leaf. While a pleasure to read and occasionally insightful, the novel never quite attains the depth required to elevate it from a fun satire to a truly profound commentary on art and the upper classes.

A jewel box of a novel that could have used a bit of polish to make it truly shine.