The Forest Lover - Softcover

Vreeland, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143034308 ISBN 13: 9780143034308

Publisher: Penguin USA, 2004

Synopsis

In her acclaimed novels, Susan Vreeland has given us portraits of painting and life that are as dazzling as their artistic subjects. Now, in The Forest Lover, she traces the courageous life and career of Emily Carr, who?more than Georgia O?Keeffe or Frida Kahlo?blazed a path for modern women artists. Overcoming the confines of Victorian culture, Carr became a major force in modern art by capturing an untamed British Columbia and its indigenous peoples just before industrialization changed them forever. From illegal potlatches in tribal communities to artists? studios in pre?World War I Paris, Vreeland tells her story with gusto and suspense, giving us a glorious novel that will appeal to lovers of art, native cultures, and lush historical fiction.

About this title

Review:

Novelist Susan Vreeland has made a career of fictionalising the lives of artists and of particular paintings. In her third novel, The Forest Lover, Vreeland's subject is the courageous Canadian painter Emily Carr, who travelled through native villages and wilderness of British Columbia in the early 1900s, often alone, on a quest to paint totem poles and other artifacts before the indigenous traditions died out and the poles were destroyed or sold. Vreeland's Carr is deeply respectful of the people she meets, and is rewarded with their trust and their stories. She brings the same sensitivity with her to Paris to see the new art, is exhibited at the Salon d'Automne, and returns to Vancouver in 1912 with a style so direct, and colours so expressive, that a conservative local reviewer dubs her a wild beast, literally, a Fauve. Vreeland's strength is in the tacks of emotion during dialogue, and in her nimble, exact prose. As she depicts her, Carr is an endearing and believable balance of sensitivity and determination, an artist of life as well as a remarkable painter. --Regina Marler, Amazon.com

Review:

Vreeland, as the Squamish would say, has made strong talk. (New York Newsday)

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin USA
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0143034308
• ISBN 13: 9780143034308
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464