The Light Possessed

by Alan Cheuse

Book Overview

"Ostensibly the fictional biography of a woman painter based on the life of Georgia O'Keeffe, this novel is a moving meditation on art--on color, shape, light, lines, and design. . . . Cheuse has captured in language a sense of the world that is normally expressed only in pigment on canvas".--Digby Diehl, "Playboy".

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879053631
• ISBN13: 9780879053635
• Release Date: September 1990
• Publisher: Peregrine Smith Books
• Length: 325 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The light and vastness draw only those whose souls bleed.

Don't miss Rick Bass's Foreword. Then those who have lived in the East, been transplanted or at least traveled in the Southwest, fallen in love with the ochre and vermillion mix of color as it is beheld in New Mexican light, are those who will love the Georgia O'Keefeness of Alan Cheuse's story. The question of what is fact and what is fiction haunts the reader all the way through. I would remind the reader to accept the story for what it is rather than comparing what seem to be facts to the real life of the famous painter. Cheuse has sensitively captured the various voices of the characters who narrate. A bit slow-going at first, the pace picks up until the reader is pulled into the passion in spite of the seeming objectivity of the narrative style. Having been to the home of Georgia O'Keefe, and having reclaimed my soul that wandered there ahead of my visit, reading the novel was like returning home. I cannot help but wonder how a reader who has not experienced that "light possessed" can appreciate Cheuse's description of the Blue Mesa.