WILL'S SURREAL PERIOD

In Goldstein’s latest novel, a struggling artist’s inspiration turns out to be potentially fatal.

Aspiring painter William Wozniak is a disappointment to just about everyone in his life. His unfaithful wife, Rosemary, desperately wants him to get a day job. His aging, bigoted father, Arthur, has made it plain that he regards William as a failure and is writing him out of his will. Art professionals regard his photorealist paintings as “stiff and rigid.” After Arthur finds out that his younger son and caretaker, Bertram, is gay, he promptly disowns him and decides to relocate from New York to San Francisco. He also wants William and Rosemary, who already live in that city, to move in with him and take care of him like Bertram did. William begins to paint in a new, surrealist style: “The flamingo was distorted, as if pieces of it had melted slightly and then buckled before they reformed. Each of William’s usually precise lines had veered off playfully and meandered a bit before finding its terminus.” The new paintings are an immediate success, enough to turn William into an art-world celebrity. But when he receives tragic news, he finds himself at a crossroads. Over the course of this novel, Goldstein’s prose is crisp and smooth, particularly in his descriptions of William’s art and artistic process: “He was assailing a huge canvas, larger than anything he’d previously attempted, and he was enthralled with how beautifully the work was unfolding before him.” The book does take its time to get going, but the author keeps readers engaged with the inclusion of intriguing supporting characters and numerous subplots. Overall, it’s an engaging work about the tension between artistic pursuits and the demands of marriage and family.

A complex story of the life of an unlucky painter.