A symphonic novel that sheds new light on an elusive genius.
Russo dramatizes the famous painter’s life, focusing on the women who knew him, in this historical novel.
Vincent van Gogh is one of the most studied painters in history—and one of the least understood. Though his letters to his brother, Theo, reveal one side of the man’s tortured soul, there were other Vincents, witnessed only by the women he knew in various periods of his life. His mother, Anna Carbentus van Gogh, names him for his dead brother but finds him impossible to love in the same way. Madame Estere Denis, the French baker whose husband hires Vincent to tutor their sons, sees the beginnings of the man’s “religious madness.” Sien Hoornik, a Dutch sex worker, lives with Van Gogh, who almost becomes a father to her children, and inspires a series of intense drawings. Sister Epiphany, a nun, supervises Van Gogh when he is placed in an asylum due to his delusions. There are also the many women who break his heart: Eugenie Loyer, the flirtatious daughter of his landlady in London; his cousin, the widowed Cornelia Stricker Vos; and his mother’s nurse, Margot Begemann, who proves almost as unstable as Vincent. These stories are framed by the woman who perhaps understood Vincent the best: his sister-in-law, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. Speaking on her deathbed, Johanna dramatically reveals a secret about Vincent’s fate that she has carried for years. Russo’s lilting prose perfectly captures both the period and van Gogh’s roiling energy, as here when he courts Margot Begemann: “They walked together more often after that. Still never leaving or returning together. Propriety required it. The fear of her sisters demanded it. Vincent was forever on the tips of their spiteful, wagging tongues.” Though Russo slips into hagiographic sentimentality toward the end of the book, the earlier, subtler vignettes—particularly the stories of Hoornik and Begemann—provide rich and psychologically complex windows into the lives of not only the famous artist but the just-as-interesting women whose histories he passed through.
A symphonic novel that sheds new light on an elusive genius.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9784824185778
Page Count: 458
Publisher: Next Chapter
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A frank and open-minded account from Flemish journalist Joris of her venture into Zaire, formerly called the Congo, the infamous inspiration for Conrad's Heart of Darkness. As a child, Joris heard the tales told by her uncle, a Belgian missionary serving in the Congo. His visits were family milestones and the curios and gifts he sent back to Belgium became treasured heirlooms. But Joris the adult journalist wanted not only to follow in her uncle's footsteps but to see for herself what contemporary Zaire was like. A subtext here is a retrospective look at Belgian colonialism, notorious for its tragic failure to prepare the Congolese for independence, which, when it occurred, resulted in immediate chaos that led to the subsequent rise of Mobutu Sese Seko (president since 1965) and the ``Barons,'' who have brazenly used the country's great mineral wealth to enrich themselves. Joris first visits her uncle's old mission postings, where she meets his now-aging colleagues and learns that the Church is still one of the few ways out of poverty for bright young men, though many local churches and schools are closed down for lack of money. This poverty is a common theme of Congolese life, Joris learns, as she balances encounters with white expatriates with an excursion on the aging steamer that plies the Congo River from Kinshasa to Kisangani; a visit to Gbadolite, Mobutu's own Versailles; a trip to the southern mining province of Shaba, which in 1977 rebelled against Mobutu; and, on the lighter side but no less instructive, evenings in Maton, the famous entertainment district of Kinshasa. A deliberately impressionistic rather than definitive account, with Joris's perceptive insights and palpable sympathies for a long-suffering people making it more than just another travel book.
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 1992
ISBN: 0-689-12164-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
The rigors of Irish monasticism in the medieval period, well told by travel writer Moorhouse (On the Other Side, 1991; Hell's Foundations, 1992; etc.). The first half of the book is an imaginative reconstruction of life in an Irish monastery on the secluded rock-island of Skellig Michael from its founding in 588 to its dissolution in 1222. Moorhouse uses fictional vignettes to enliven the text. Each chapter is a well-chosen window onto a significant figure or event in the monastery's history—an 824 attack by Viking raiders, for example. In these fictional glimpses, we see the larger picture of Irish monasticism's evolution from a rigorously austere island faith to a less zealous, Romanized religion. Skellig Michael, perilously located on a sheer cliff rising from the ocean, began as one of the most ascetic of the Irish monasteries. Gradually, however, the population of monks began to dwindle, and the last fictionalized chapter shows the abbot and his aging disciples rowing their way back to the security of the mainland. The first half of the book is so intriguing and beautifully written that the second, a more traditional historical treatment of Irish monasticism, arranged topically, pales by comparison. Some of the discussions are absorbing, though; in one instance, Moorhouse explores the theme of syncretism, arguing that early Irish Catholicism, rather than eradicating pagan Celtic rituals, incorporated them into monastic life. This eclectic borrowing was able to continue for centuries because of Ireland's geographical remoteness from the centralizing forces of Rome. Due to accommodation with a Celtic spring ritual, Easter was dated differently than in Rome, a discrepancy that continued until Rome demanded conformity in the early 8th century. An uneven work, then, more fascinating in its first, fictionalized half than in the rigorous explications of the second, and one that might have worked better presented purely as a novel. (illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-15-100277-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
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