The Art Forger by Barbara Shapiro

This book is: a great story.
Other elements: art, crime, forgery, Degas, Isabelle Gardener, the Gardener museum heist, Boston.
Read it: if you have any interest in the art world or if you don’t but you love a good story.
Overall rating: 7/10

The contemporary heroine of the story is Claire Roth, aspiring painter struggling against the spotty reputation she’s won in the art world thanks to a misguided attempt she made to help her ex-lover through a difficult time. Claire has a talent for copying the work of other artists, which, thanks to Reproductions.com, is how she makes a living while waiting for her own original work to receive the attention it deserves.

The building was once a factory–handkerchiefs, some old-timer told me.  But old-timers aren’t known for their veracity, so it could have been hats or suspenders or maybe not even a factory at all. Now it’s a warren of artist’s studios, some, as in my case, live-in studios. Illegal, of course, but cheap. – Page 5

The plot of the The Art Forger takes its inspiration from real life events: the colorful and still mysterious Gardener museum art heist.  The story flashes back and forth between Claire’s present, in which she’s trying make a name for herself, and the past of the infamous Isabelle Gardener of the Gardener Museum, whose life and legacy become increasingly relevant to Claire’s present. Shapiro takes this true story and weaves a web of fictional and historical characters in and around the true events to create a fascinating and completely engrossing story of fine art, love, questionable morality, and festering secrets.

One of Shapiro’s strongest points is her characters: even those with only minor roles are well-rounded and complex. No one is simply evil or good; they’re all real people with motivations and of their own. And – although I can barely draw a symmetrical stick figure – my writerly self felt a kinship for the community of aspiring artists who meet at their local bar every day to talk about recent failures and the occasional success. I think any kind of art (written or painted) has a similar amount of heartbreak inherent in the process of searching for recognition and validation.

“Did it go well?” Mike asks. We sometimes call Mike “the church lady” in joking salute to his keen sense of right and wrong.
“I’m guessing not, although I wasn’t expecting much.” A lie everyone recognizes. They’ve all said the same thing after a career disappointment. It’s how we survive.
“A shot of tequila for my friend here,” Mike says to Maureen. Aside from Rik, who isn’t really an artist anymore, Mike’s the only one of us who can afford actual drinks. He’s a lawyer by day, painter by night. – Page 17

My favorite aspect of The Art Forger was the inclusion of so much technical information related to art authentication and forgery. I’m a sucker for a book that treats me like I’m capable of understanding as much about something as the main character does, and this was no exception. I love feeling like I’m learning along with the characters, and I lap up the random trivia, the more obscure the better. (Cutting for Stone is another great example of a book that excels at interweaving large amounts of technical information.) Art forgery is both sufficiently obscure that I didn’t really know anything about it going into the novel, and sufficiently fascinating to keep me interested when things got complicated.

The dialogue isn’t always the most free-flowing, and certain plot events are rather too coincidental to be entirely believable – but I still had a great time reading The Art Forger.

I also happened to start reading this book shortly after the Boston Marathon (and all of the events that followed the marathon this year), at which point it felt very timely to be reading a novel set in Boston, especially a story that delves so exquisitely into the city’s cultural history and rich, artistic present.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

This book is: a futuristic, dystopian reimagining of the Cinderella story.
Other elements: cyborgs, people who live on the moon, global pandemics, hot Princes, strong and admirable women.
Read it: if you love a good fractured fairy tale.
Overall rating: 8.75/10

This book has so many elements that I normally dislike. There are spaceships and moon people and robots – even Cinderella herself is part-robot. If I had read even one summary, I would probably never have given it a chance. But I did no research, just impulse bought it during a Kindle sale, and I’m so glad I did.

The story that begins in Cinder is woven around the bones of the Cinderella story but it goes above and beyond (and under and around) to such a degree that I found myself really wondering what was going to happen. The familiar Cinderella tropes appear – there is a ball, there is a dress from an unexpected source, there is a prince – but the situations are so different that it feels entirely fresh.

She wouldn’t fit in a a formal ball anyway. Even if she did find dress gloves and slippers that could hide her metal monstrosities, her mousy hair would never hold a curl, and she didn’t know the first thing about makeup. She would just end up sitting off the dance floor and making fun of the girls who swooned to get Prince Kai’s attention, pretending she wasn’t jealous. Pretending it didn’t bother her.

Although she was curious about the food. – Page 30

Cinder herself, a “gifted mechanic” and cyborg, is a strong, independent, and resourceful sixteen-year-old with a mysterious past. The accident that nearly killed her when she was a child – the reason she has a mechanical hand and leg – left her with no memories from before age 11. As the story progresses and events converge, Cinder starts to learn that she might not be exactly who she always thought she was.

There’s also a planet-wide plague, a looming inter-galactic military conflict, and a complex and brilliantly crafted world with political and social issues of is own. As a cyborg, Cinder has fewer rights than the human members of her adopted family; something that her stepmother takes advantage of. And of course, there’s a ball.

I actually am going to make this a book review and a half…I read the next book in the series, Scarlet, right after finishing Cinder. Scarlet continues the storyline begun by Cinder but weaves in another storyline – that of tough, Red-Riding-Hood inspired Scarlet and her new friend, who she calls Wolf. Scarlet  is just as good as Cinder but for all the same reasons, which is why I’m sticking it onto the end of this review instead of giving it its own. There’s also the fact that I only paused for about 10 minutes between the two books, so I might be fuzzy about where one ended and the other began.

This is the beginning of an excellent series, and I can’t wait to see what Marissa Meyer does next with it. Two more books are expected; the first due in 2014.

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

This book is: a raucous yarn.
Other elements: elephants, communism, hijinks, bibles, murder, explosives, centenarians, crime, politics, atom bombs.
Read it: if your brain wants a treat.
Overall rating: 8.75/10

He was on the run from his own birthday party, another unusual thing for a 100-year-old, not least of which because even being 100 is pretty rare. (Page 8)

I was having a rough week when I happened to download this book onto my Kindle and give it a go, and it was exactly what the doctor ordered. I took it up to my roof deck with a blanket and a big glass of wine, and it was the ideal kickoff to my spring.

First, credit where credit is due: it was Publisher’s Weekly who first referred to this book as a “raucous yarn” and I haven’t been able to think anything else about it since. Thank you, PW, for calling this book exactly what it is. I hereby borrow your phraseology.

What makes The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (I’m not going to repeat the title every time) such a success is its tone. The premise and plot of the novel are both extraordinarily complex and completely absurd, and the only way to pull them off would have been to write the book in exactly the right way. Luckily for us, Jonas Jonasson did write it in exactly the right way. Major props also to Rod Bradbury, who translated the novel from Swedish into English.

Chief Inspector Aronsson ended the evening with a gin and tonic, and while he drank, he sat there feeling sorry for himself and fantasized about pulling out his service pistol and shooting the pianist in the bar. (Page 202)

My one criticism is that I think this book would have benefited from being the tiniest bit shorter. Cutting one or two of the less brilliant scenes would have allowed to let the rest of the novel shine more brightly. I found myself tiring of the characters for about 20 pages 2/3 of the way through – and then something amazing happened, and I was in love with everything again. But I would have preferred to avoid the loss of momentum, if possible. I read very quickly, however, and that can make it easier to overdoes on a distinctive voice.

As a child, Allan had been taught to be suspicious of people who didn’t have a drink when the opportunity arose. He was no more than six years old when his father laid a hand on his little shoulder and said:

–You should beware of priests, my son. And people who don’t drink vodka. Worst of all are priests who don’t drink vodka. (Page 135)

Despite that, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and if you like dark humor, absurd situations, and improbable coincidences, you will too. I actually think it feels somewhat like a Mel Brooks movie, except that, rather than feeling like one long joke, the book takes itself seriously and all of the events that transpire just happen to be ridiculous.