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Summary
Summary
After a childhood marked by pain, Rena has found the strength to build a career as a photographer. Like the film she uses, Rena sees what others don't see, and finds a form of love. Away from her lover, stuck in Florence, Rena confronts not only the masterpieces of the Renaissance but the inconveniences of a family holiday.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Huston's exceptional new novel (after the Prix Femina Award-winning Fault Lines) chronicles a weeklong Italian trip taken by photographer Rena Greenblatt to celebrate her father's 70th birthday. Trouble brews early when two teenagers are electrocuted near Rena's home in Paris, sparking riots, and Rena's lover/colleague urges her to come back to document the chaos. As Rena gets lost in an internal conversation with her imaginary sister, Huston expertly navigates past and present, taking us into vivid recollections of Rena's absent lawyer mother, who killed herself; the secret alliances Rena shared with her scientist father, a one-time radical who didn't live up to his potential; her complicated relationship with her older brother; her somewhat dim stepmother, Ingrid; her many affairs; and how all of it made her who she is. Huston makes her protagonist likable despite her irksome quirks: she's short with her guileless stepmother, indignant and quick to start arguments with anyone who disagrees with her; in short, Rena feels truly real, which makes the novel's abrupt ending all the more disappointing. Agent: Text Publishing Co., Melbourne, Australia. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Huston follows up Fault Lines (2008), winner of France's Prix Femina, with an intense story of a woman photographer on a one-week vacation in Florence, with her aging father and dimwitted stepmother. Attempting to deal with the tedious aspects of traveling with her parents while fielding frantic phone calls from her lover, a reporter caught up in the race riots that have exploded in Paris, she turns inward, subsumed by memories of her difficult childhood and her many sexual relationships. She specializes in infrared photography, for which she feels a certain affinity: I myself am the ultrasensitive film capturing invisible reality, capturing heat. And she shares her innermost thoughts and feelings with an imaginary half sister she calls Subra (an inverted spelling of Arbus, the photographer to whom she feels especially indebted). She writes frankly about sexual desire, her father's mortality, her brother's inappropriate sexual overtures, and her mother's suicide. So this is no easygoing Tuscany travelogue but, rather, a ruminative novel about the difficulties of coming-of-age and attaining true intimacy. An intricately written, thought-provoking examination of the power of both sexuality and art.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Huston may have invented a new genre with her 11th novel, self-translated from the French. In this erotic travelog of sorts, definitely NSFW (read: not safe for work), narrator Rena is, like the author, a Canadian-born Franco-phile. She uses a trip to Italy with her aging father and naive stepmother as an opportunity to reflect on her many relationships, her career as a photographer, art history, and, above all else, sex. The story is told in the third person but with a strange device: Rena constantly tells stories in the first person to her imaginary friend, Subra. It is in these stories that the intimate details of her life are revealed, juxtaposed with the banal day-to-day existence of a tourist. The reading experience is a bit like a poetic puzzle, through which the reader slowly discovers the origins of Rena's sexuality and creative ideas. -VERDICT A distinctive journey recommended for those who enjoy erotic stories with an intellectual core. Also recommended for travelog and memoir enthusiasts. [See Prepub Alert, 1/8/12.]-Kate Gray, Pratt Inst., New York (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.