NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE
An incomparable storyteller serves up an enchanting concoction of
art, love, and longing
In fifteen masterful stories, Frederic Tuten entertains questions of
existential magnitude, pervasive yearning, and the creative impulse. A
wealthy older woman reflects on her relationship with her drowned
husband, a painter, as she awaits her own watery demise. An exhausted
artist, feeling stuck, reads a book of criticism about allegory and
symbolism before tossing her paintings out the window. Writing a book
about the lives of artists he admires--Cezanne, Monet, Rousseau--a man
imagines how each vignette could be a life lesson for his wife, the
artist he perhaps admires the most.
Whether set in Tuten's beloved Lower East Side, Rome's Borghese Gardens,
or a French seaside resort, these stories shift seamlessly between the
poignancy of memory into the logic of fairytales or dreams,
demonstrating Tuten's exceptional ability to transmute his passion for
art and life to the page.