The Age of Light

By Whitney Scharer

Book Overview

One of the Best Books of the Year: Parade, Glamour, Real Simple, Refinery29, Yahoo Lifestyle. "A startlingly modern love story and a mesmerizing portrait of a woman's self-transformation from muse to artist." --Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere

"I'd rather take a photograph than be one," Lee Miller declares after she arrives in Paris in 1929, where she soon catches the eye of the famous Surrealist Man Ray. Though he wants to use her only as a model, Lee convinces him to take her on as his assistant and teach her everything he knows. As they work together in the darkroom, their personal and professional lives become intimately entwined, changing the course of Lee's life forever.

Lee's journey of self-discovery takes took her from the cabarets of bohemian Paris to the battlefields of war-torn Europe during WWII, from inventing radical new photography techniques to documenting the liberation of the concentration camps as one of the first female war correspondents. Through it all, Lee must grapple with the question of whether it's possible to stay true to herself while also fulfilling her artistic ambition--and what she will have to sacrifice to do so.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316524085
• ISBN13: 9780316524087
• Release Date: February 2019
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Slow start, compelling ending

Give it a chance. The story of Lee Miller will have you googling to view her life story and her photographs. Yet another almost-forgotten female talent who deserves her own space in the larger story of the 20th century, here the author uses the fiction form to entice the Gentle Reader to understand how victimization and fear has all to often stifled creativity and how a male-centered culture allowed men to take credit for women’s achievements. But it is also a love story, between Man and Lee, but mostly been Lee and herself.