Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him
1 rating since posting on Friday, November 28, 2008
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Pretension is the bio-gas that fuels the art world. No news there. But pretense never ranks more foul then when some work of genuine beauty blows through the scene like a breathe of fresh air. Danielle Ganek's first novel, "Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him," observes how a compelling painting from a recently-deceased artist causes social ripples across the insular New York art world. Dealers, collectors, hangers-on and relatives all try to acquire the picture, or at least bask in the glow of its divinity. It inspires greed, bluster, double-dealing and self-doubt. But the wisest learn the lessons that seem to reside within the work itself. Twenty-something New York gallery receptionist, Mia McMurray is in the thick of things. She works at a gallery that shows the work. The artist, 54-year old Jeffrey Finelli, is actually killed during the night of the opening, run over by a taxi when he stepped outside for a smoke. Naturally, the value of all his paintings being shown rises dramatically within hours of his demise, particularity the show's centerpiece, a nine-by-twelve portrait of a young girl doubtfully holding a paintbrush. "The scale gives the piece intensity ... But it's the look on the girl's face, wise and so clearly full of doubt ... that makes it difficult for the viewer to look away," Ganek writes of the painting, the title of which doubles as the novel's title. For the gallery's owner, Simon Pryce, an perpetually nervous man with a fake upper-crust British accent, the painting is his ticket to greater prestige in the art world. It is McMurray, though, who must juggle the multiple individuals to which Pryce promised the work. Muddying the situation is that the real Lulu, a young female relative of Finelli who was the unwitting model for the portrait, claims the artist promised the painting to her before he died. McMurray becomes good friends with this young woman, who, as it turns out, has quite a bit of latent artistic talent herself—more so than McMurray, who harbors a secret wish to become a painter. The publisher likens "Lulu" to Lauren Weisberger's 2003 "The Devil Wears Prada," perhaps eying that novel's immense success. Pryce doesn't exactly cast as menacing a shadow as Miranda Priestly, but "Lulu" does skewer the gallery openings, art auctions and artists dinners with much of the same malicious glee that "Devil" took on the publishing world. And like "Devil," the acrid observations come as part of a larger search for the main character's place in her chosen profession. The end-result is half satire and half chick-lit, but Ganek's spare, fast-moving prose ensures that this hybrid makes for an engaging light read. - Joab , posted 11/28/08 |
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