THE ART OF HER LIFE

An artist and mother deals with a cancer scare and the absence of her archaeologist boyfriend in Martin’s novel.

Emily Hall works as a registrar at an art museum in Charleston, South Carolina, that is planning a spectacular show: The participants will name their favorite paintings, which the museum will then try to secure on loan to be displayed in a special exhibit. A would-be curator, Emily submits her own selection, naming Matisse’s The Breakfast as her favorite. In the painting, Matisse’s model seems lost in thought in a hotel room, but Emily sees more: “What it told me then was that there was more to life than the everyday.” Emily is divorced and dating Mark, an archaeologist, but there’s a glitch—Mark has accepted a job in Turkey that requires a four-year commitment. He proposes to Emily, who, though she is torn, declines. A more alarming problem surfaces when a blood test comes back with an irregular result, a possible sign of ovarian cancer. From Turkey, Mark asks her not to write, but as Emily’s blood tests begin to look worse, she hesitantly begins to contact him. The author’s literary novel is replete with references to beautiful artwork, and she writes wonderfully about the mysteries behind the splashes of color on the canvas. Most impressive is the way Martin integrates Emily’s career and love of Matisse with the everyday challenges she faces at home and with Mark. Mark’s dispatches from abroad provide an alluring international aspect to the story, while anticipation and dread combine in the narratives of the approaching art show and Emily’s medical drama. While a happy ending is not guaranteed, the search for beauty and meaning in the world around us mitigates the somber third act.

An unsentimental, luminous story about art, illness, and complicated relationships.