The Artist's Wife

By Max Phillips

Book Overview

An elegant reimagining of the life of Alma Mahler, the lovely, aristocratic fin-de-si?cle composer who abandoned her own art to become the inspiration and collector of geniuses. At the turn of the century, "the most beautiful girl in Vienna" stood at the threshold of a promising musical career. But instead, she turned her considerable talents to becoming a freelance muse. Passionate, fickle, brilliant, and alcoholic, she conquered a series of difficult geniuses, including the composer Gustav Mahler (whom she sent to Freud for marriage counseling); the architect Walter Gropius, who went on to found the Bauhaus movement; the writer Franz Werfel, author of The Song of Bernadette; and the revolutionary painters Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka. Deftly bling period detail and modern sensibility, Max Phillips presents the bold, unapologetic Alma, who narrates her own provocative story, bringing to life the luminaries of her era as she tells of her triumphs in the fading elegance of Central Europe's beau monde, her flight from Hitler's Anschluss, and her exile in golden-age Hollywood. A glittering, darkly sensual novel, The Artist's Wife turns the lens of history upon the nature of inspiration, ambition, and love.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805066705
• ISBN13: 9780805066708
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Spun Gold

"The Artist's Wife" is based on the life of Viennese beauty, Alma Schindler, an incredible woman with hair of (seemingly) spun gold, who married, believe it or not, the composer Gustav Mahler, Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius and the writer Franz Werfel. All of them, including Gustav Klimt, the most important painter of fin-de-siecle Europe, loved her to distraction and swore that a part, at least, of his most profound and greatest work was inspired, both by her and by his passion for her.Alma, while being quite successful as a muse, was less successful as a mistress and a wife, and she was certainly no "good girl." She sometimes had more than one lover at a time and felt no shame in the situation. Instead, she called herself "a collector of geniuses." She was, by turns, a seductress, a flirt, a romantic and a real delight. She was also dreadfully anti-Semitic despite the fact that she had, not one, but two, Jewish husbands, Mahler and Werfel.This book is called "fiction" but it is really based on Alma's own memoirs. Phillips writes the story from Alma's point of view, however, from beyond the grave, and he tosses in carefully chosen bits of imagined conversation, etc., causing the book to be classified as "fiction" rather than "fact."Alma is not a character we can admire, but she is certainly interesting. She is a restless spirit in death and in life she was often selfish and downright mean. More than anything, she is vain, but she is not vain about everything. She does realize that she, too, has her faults. As she says about her voice, "I screeched all the Wagner roles until I ruined a good mezzo-soprano voice." And, as she once wrote in her diary, "I'm utterly vulgar, superficial, sybaritic, domineering and egoistic!"If Alma was hard on herself, she was even harder on her husbands and lovers and even her potential lovers. She was a notorious flirt who often brought men to their knees only to spurn them in the most ungracious manner. One sometimes wonders why she bothered marrying at all; her opinion of the men in her life seems so very low. Gropius, who seems like an Adonis to Alma at first, sours as well, leaving Alma bored and lonely at only thirty-two and ready for an encounter with the wild, possessive and jealous painter, Oskar Kokoschka, who is six years her junior. Kokoschka, in the end, loses out to Gropius who, despite his boring qualities is more of a genius than is Kokoschka. Kokoschka doesn't take his humiliation at all well and what he does is pitiful, a little shocking and even a little funny. And, to be sure, the humor of the situation isn't lost on Alma. Sadly, in some ways, Alma Schlinder, whose life so depended on her good looks and her vibrant wit, oulived almost everyone around her and lost both her looks and her wit at about the same time. Although some readers have complained about the rather staccato prose in this book, it is prose that fits exactly the way Alma wrote in her own memoirs, so I think it i

She did not falter on a trip to the altar...

Alma Mahler is one of the most intriguing figures in an era filled with some of the most significant (and slightly crazy) figures in the 20th century. As someone who has read Alma's own diaries, as well as books by and about her numerous lovers (Gustav Mahler, Oskar Kokoshka, Walter Gropius, Franz Werfel, among the most famous), Max Philips does a fabulous job of getting at the essence of this astonishing woman. Philips does not claim to have written a book of historical accuracy, but the details aren't as important as that maddeningly willful yet passive tone of voice, and Philips captures that brilliantly. A wild ride through the Vienna of Freud, Klimt, and Mahler, if you aren't already familiar with Alma's excellent adventures, this is a great place to start.

Utter Delight

This book was intriguing from the moment I picked it up and examined the cover...Max Phillips has the female perspective down to a tee--his genius spanning our abilities to endure, to dream, to quip {silently of course} one liners at poignant moments,and to eternally adapt to what falls into our path each day/each season of our life. His narration of Alma's telling of her life is mesmorizing and I rationed myself a sparingly small nibble a day to make the delight last...I found this book fascinating and fulfilling. That it was historically true made it 3 dimensional.

Phillips is a major talent, and this is a great book

There are many reasons to love this book, but at the very top of the list has to be this immensely talented writer's gorgeous prose. Nobody else writes sentences as stunning as Max Phillips. He could write a biography of Frank Perdue and make chicken farming irresistable.Here, he has a great subject, too -- one of history's most enigmatic and intriguing personalities, immortalized in Tom Lehrer's amusing song "Alma," but amply deserving of the richer, more insightful treatment she gets here. She's more than just wife and mistress to all the great men of turn-of-the-century Vienna; she's a troubled, difficult woman trying to find her identity in a social circle where anyone with less than genius-level talent would have trouble holding her own. What's a girl to do? Marry a succession of geniuses and wield a wife's power to establish a role in their lives of significance -- but is that enough?There is more to this novel than it appears to deliver the first time you read it, and it's so well written that it is well worth re-reading. Few recent novels are so satisfying or so good.Go buy it. You'll be sorry if you let this one leave the stores before you've read it.