Cynthia Newberry Martin's new novel is a bold transcendent meditation on desire, memory, motherhood, and the power of art to remake a life. I loved this book. I could not put it down. There's a spare lyric grace to Martin's writing, and in this story, she captures the nuances of ordinary life - what we love and fear to risk, what we lose and ache to hold. The Art of Her Life is a rare, exquisite work of fiction -Dawn Tripp, author of Georgia, a novel of Georgia O'Keeffe
Cynthia Newberry Martin is a deeply gifted writer. The Art of Her Life should be placed on the same shelf as A.S. Byatt's The Matisse Stories. When tragic things happen to the character of Emily, she becomes devoted to a kind of Gospel of Henri Matisse, and she gets lost in the artist's life in order to find her own life again. This is a family story; this is a love story. But the novel combines these in profound and original ways. The splendid prose is tinted with the inimitable melancholy of Matisse's blue. -Howard Norman, author of The Ghost Clause
In The Art of Her Life, Cynthia Newberry Martin tenderly and delicately shows how the unexpected turns of a life can most often only be steadied and moored by what we hold deepest inside. It is told with no punches pulled. No self-interrogation spared. Just a keen and blunt honesty. A lovely and moving novel that celebrates the legacy of the creative spirit, the power and salvation of art, and the challenges in balancing an intellectual life with an emotional life. -Adam Braver, author of Rejoice the Head of Paul McCartney
With grace and clarity, Cynthia Newberry Martin paints in this novel a lasting portrait of love and family, of love and perseverance, of love and beauty and care and heart. Even in the face of loss, every brushstroke of life becomes somehow sacred, a blessing, an abundance. -William Lychack, author of Cargill Falls
The Art of Her Life is a rare book about an adult woman with the full complement of responsibilities-children, job, love, passions-grappling with how to manage and juggle them. Matisse's art, and the painting Breakfast in particular, is a character in this gorgeous book-his use of color and channeling of emotion form lifelines for our protagonist. Matisse accompanies Emily on her journey as she learns that, paradoxically, it is only through surrender that we can feel life's wholeness. I loved this book. -Lindsey Mead, editor of On Being Forty(ish)
2023-04-19
An artist and mother deals with a cancer scare and the absence of her archaeologist boyfriend in Martin’s novel.
Emily Hall works as a registrar at an art museum in Charleston, South Carolina, that is planning a spectacular show: The participants will name their favorite paintings, which the museum will then try to secure on loan to be displayed in a special exhibit. A would-be curator, Emily submits her own selection, naming Matisse’s The Breakfastas her favorite. In the painting, Matisse’s model seems lost in thought in a hotel room, but Emily sees more: “What it told me then was that there was more to life than the everyday.” Emily is divorced and dating Mark, an archaeologist, but there’s a glitch—Mark has accepted a job in Turkey that requires a four-year commitment. He proposes to Emily, who, though she is torn, declines. A more alarming problem surfaces when a blood test comes back with an irregular result, a possible sign of ovarian cancer. From Turkey, Mark asks her not to write, but as Emily’s blood tests begin to look worse, she hesitantly begins to contact him. The author’s literary novel is replete with references to beautiful artwork, and she writes wonderfully about the mysteries behind the splashes of color on the canvas. Most impressive is the way Martin integrates Emily’s career and love of Matisse with the everyday challenges she faces at home and with Mark. Mark’s dispatches from abroad provide an alluring international aspect to the story, while anticipation and dread combine in the narratives of the approaching art show and Emily’s medical drama. While a happy ending is not guaranteed, the search for beauty and meaning in the world around us mitigates the somber third act.
An unsentimental, luminous story about art, illness, and complicated relationships.
