Vivienne

By Emmalea Russo

Book Overview

"One of the year's most impressive debuts."--David Gutowski, LargeheartedBoy.com

"A skin-crawling drama about three generations of women and their relationships to one another. . . a satirical comedy that is at its core a book of poetry, or literary art."--Artnet

Did Vivienne Volker Kill Wilma Lang?

This question has dogged Vivienne ever since Wilma jumped from a window to her death shortly after Volker stole her lover, the visionary artist Hans Bellmer, in the 1970s. Once a famous artist and fashion icon, Volker is now in her eighties and spends her days in religious contemplation in rural Pennsylvania alongside her daughter Velour Bellmer, her granddaughter Vesta Furio, her much younger boyfriend--a garbageman named Lou--and Franz, the family dog. Their quiet lives are disrupted when Vivienne's work is selected for inclusion in a high-profile retrospective called "Forgotten Women Surrealists" at the prestigious NAT Museum. However, when rumors of her past misdeeds begin to circulate and she is dropped from the show, a gallery curator enters the picture hoping to capitalize on the buzz generated by the controversy, sending the family's tensions, hopes, and dreams to a dizzying peak.

Set over the course of a fateful week, Vivienne deftly weaves surreal prose with a Greek chorus of internet comments and text messages, to ask the questions: what is the cost of vision, what is the price of art? What connects creation and procreation, a life and an afterlife?

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1648210643
• ISBN13: 9781648210648
• Release Date: September 2024
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Extremely well-written, intriguing book.

This is the first book I've read in a long time that required me to take notes. It's an intricately-written book that raises more questions than answers. A lot of the plots and subplots have knowledge gaps that are left up to the reader to fill in. I read this book as part of a book club required reading list. When we got together to discuss it, we all had very different takes on what the author was trying to say. It wasn't a bad thing. It left us all engaged in a fascinating mystery. Book club went overtime. Seriously overtime. Yes, I am going to re-read it. Be sure to get a paper copy of the book. Don't skip the notes in the back of the book.