The Collector's Apprentice: A Novel

by B. A. Shapiro Narrated by Xe Sands

Overview

It's the summer of 1922, and nineteen-year-old Paulien Mertens finds herself in Paris-broke, disowned, and completely alone. Everyone in Belgium, including her own family, believes she stole millions in a sophisticated con game perpetrated by her then-fiancé, George Everard. To protect herself from the law and the wrath of those who lost everything, she creates a new identity, a Frenchwoman named Vivienne Gregsby, and sets out to recover her father's art collection, prove her innocence-and exact revenge on George.



When the eccentric and wealthy American art collector Edwin Bradley, who is based on real life museum founder Albert Barnes, offers Vivienne the perfect job, she is soon caught up in the Parisian world of post-Impressionists and expatriates-including Gertrude Stein and Henri Matisse, with whom Vivienne becomes romantically entwined. As she travels between Paris and Philadelphia, where Bradley is building an art museum, her life becomes even more complicated: George returns with unclear motives . . . and then Vivienne is arrested for Bradley's murder.



B. A. Shapiro has made the historical art thriller her own. In The Collector's Apprentice, she gives us an unforgettable tale about the lengths to which people will go for their obsession, whether it be art, money, love, or vengeance.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Shapiro delivers a clever and complex tale of art fraud, theft, scandal, murder, and revenge. [Her] portrayal of the 1920s art scene in Paris and Philadelphia is vibrant, and is populated by figures like Alice B. Toklas and Thornton Wilder; readers will be swept away by this thoroughly rewarding novel.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Lush, atmospheric . . . Shapiro’s romantic and suspenseful art thriller will delight historical- and crime-fiction fans.”
—Booklist

“B.A. Shapiro is back with a platinum potion of art, love, and scandal, set against the big backdrop of Paris between the wars. If you can put The Collector’s Apprentice down, you’re made of stronger stuff than I am. I read it in one sumptuous sitting. This is a big story, from a big talent.” 
—Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean

“Dazzling and seductive, The Collector’s Apprentice is a tour de force—an exhilarating tale of shifting identities, desire, and intrigue set between 1920s Paris and Philadelphia. Shapiro is a master at melding historical and fictional characters to bring the past alive on the page, and in The Collector’s Apprentice she has forged an exquisite, multilayered story that maps the cogent and singular fire of a young woman’s ambition and the risks she will take for the sake of art.”   
—Dawn Tripp, bestselling author of Georgia

“I was engrossed in every twist and turn in this compulsively captivating page-turner, all the way until its astonishing denouement. Shapiro has done it again!”
—Thrity Umrigar, bestselling author of The Space Between Us

“A seamless blend of art history set against a wider historical backdrop.”
—Detroit Jewish News
 
“In prose lush with post-Impressionist art history, Shapiro's intriguing novel presents a heroine either evil or sympathetic—until the very end.”
—Shelf Awareness
 
“Shapiro packs her novel with intrigues and mysteries . . . Readers will . . . be charmed.”
—Chapter16.org
 
 “B. A. Shapiro delivers another dose of art history, wrapped tightly in a thriller.”
—New York Journal of Books
 
“Shapiro creates a complex, detailed, and historically-accurate world, and the lack of any straightforwardly heroic characters, along with a superb depiction of the glamorous 1920s Parisian art scene, makes this novel a standout among dark, twisting historical mysteries.”
—San Francisco Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

2018-07-31

A woman with a shameful past, now in search of revenge and her family's forgiveness, finds herself assisting an irascible patron of the arts who is building one of the world's great private art collections. But will his paintings ever be hers?

Inspired by the story of Philadelphia's famed Barnes Foundation but fictionalized with a sizeable swirl of sensationalism, Shapiro's (The Muralist, 2015, etc.) latest art-world novel spans three timelines involving Belgian Paulien Mertens, who grew up in a home graced by a collection of valuable art, including seven modern works by groundbreaking postimpressionists including Cézanne and Matisse. As the novel opens in Paris in 1922, Paulien, aged 19, has been banished from her home and family, which has been bankrupted in a Ponzi scheme launched by her fiancé, George Everard. Flashing back periodically to 1920, the novel shows how innocent Paulien fell into George's trap; flashing forward to 1928, it reveals her reincarnated as Vivienne Gregsby, on trial for the murder of Dr. Edwin Bradley, a rich American chemist who was amassing a vast collection of postimpressionist art, including those seven Mertens paintings which Paulien dreams of restoring to her father. The central 1922 thread traces Paulien's rebirth as Vivenne, her developing involvement with Bradley, and her move to the U.S. and yearning to inherit his collection herself. But whether flirting—and sleeping—with Matisse, palling around with Gertrude Stein, reuniting dubiously with George, or plotting in secret against Bradley, Paulien is a character short on both conviction and charm. And as the tale enters a late, repetitive spiral of machinations, a credulity-stretching mood intensifies.

Less might have been more in this increasingly convoluted fusion of history and fantasy centered on an ambiguous central figure.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170214440
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	10/16/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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