Book
The Bellini Madonna
Record details
- ISBN: 9780374110383 (alk. paper)
-
Physical Description:
print
336 p ; 24 cm. ; cm. ; - Edition: 1st American ed.
- Publisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009, c2008.
Content descriptions
| General Note: | "Originally published in 2008 by Quercus, Great Britain."--T.p. verso |
| Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Art historians -- Fiction Art -- Provenance -- Fiction Country homes -- England -- Fiction England -- Fiction |
Available copies
- 2 of 2 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 2 total copies.
Show Only Available Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kitimat Public Library | Low (Text) | 32665001439563 | Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
| Bridge River Branch | AF LOW (Text) | 35180200131232 | Adult Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2009 May #1
Debauched art historian Tom Lynch is desperate to track down a long-lost Renaissance painting, an unusual portrait of the Madonna by Bellini. He has high hopes when he arrives at Mawles, an English manor still in the family of James Roper, the collector Lynch believes last owned the Madonna. But Lynch soon finds himself bewildered. The mazelike mansion seems to change shape and configuration from one day to the next, while Anna, the enticing current resident, morphs from waif to spy to captor to earth goddess. Lynch, a self-described "aesthete and egoist" with a "rapacious hunger for beauty," is further addled by his dreamy immersion in Roper's diary account of a sojourn in Italy, during which he meets Robert Browning and becomes engaged to an Italian aristocrat. Written in the form of a discursive, rueful confession, first-time novelist Lowry's lapidary tale of obsession, delusion, and turpitude has a playfully Jamesian cast to its elaborate ruminations on the perfection of aesthetics versus the messiness of life. This sophisticated, parodic puzzler tells an archly entertaining tale of misdirected ardor. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews. - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2009 March #2
In this elegantly playful British debut, a self-loathing professor of fine art with an arch personal style narrates his quest for a missing Renaissance masterpiece.Lowry's accomplished novel mixes history, sex, psychology and art, funneled through the florid character of Irish-born Thomas Lynch, a tortured 50-year-old academic whose career at a Vermont college is cut short by homosexual misconduct. For the last decade Lynch has been obsessed with finding a lost Bellini Madonna mentioned in Dürer's papers, which brings him to Mawle House, a neglected country manor in England where he believes it may be found. As Lynch combs the house for the picture and reads a Mawle ancestor's Victorian diary for clues, he begins to find himself attracted to the owner's daughter, Anna. What he does not realize is that his schemes and vanities have been predicted by diminutive fellow academic Ludovico Puppi and Anna's mother, the widowed heir of Mawle. While Lynch's lusts, ripe reflections and self-lacerating comments create a dense, overheated atmosphere, Lowry's erudition and fastidiousness sometimes blot out the simple business of plot and pace. Despite its comic streak, the book's ultimate mood is tragicâgaining what he seeks leads Lynch to transformation but also to a fatal clarity.An ambitious, accomplished piece of work, part rococo amusement, part darker philosophical judgment. Copyright Kirkus 2009 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2009 January #1
In Lowry's wildly imaginative debut, Irish-born art historian Thomas Lynch is a "disappointed pilgrim scholar" with a brutish obsession for the "perversely vital" aesthetic of religious art. The book begins as Lynch, withering away at an idyllic Vermont college amid the provincial minds of fellow faculty and his own alcoholism, is sent packing after a case of sexual misconduct with a student. Crazed and inspired by his brush with bottoming out, Lynch begins a quest to find a vanished painting only he believes exists. Most of the novel takes place inside a decrepit English estate, where Lynch is a guest of the Ropers, who he suspects possess the painting. Lynch's psyche becomes increasingly entangled in the Ropers' esoteric personalities and with a family diary that he believes contains the answer to his "exquisite craving" for discovery. Lowry's gift for poetic precision allows her to keep her cast fresh by providing constantly new insight into their oddities, and though the novel's second half suffers from an undernourished and canned plot, the bold character work and beautiful prose are reason enough to keep reading. (May)
[Page 31]. Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
