The Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman: A Novel
In a lively and pointed variation on James Joyce&#x2019;s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, popular and conceptually adventurous Naslund (Adam &amp; Eve, 2010) portrays two women artists in a novel-within-a-novel. Successful writer Kathryn Callaghan lives in present-day Louisville, Kentucky, in a lovely, old neighborhood surrounding a fountain depicting &#x201C;Venus Rising from the Sea,&#x201D; a graceful embodiment of the novel&#x2019;s inquiry into the obstacles confronting women artists. Battered by her third divorce yet buoyed by her neighbors and friends, Kathryn completes a novel about the brilliant and resolute French painter &#xC9;lisabeth Vig&#xE9;e-Lebrun (1755&#x2013;1842). After surviving childhood loss and a disastrous marriage to become a renowned portraitist, &#xC9;lisabeth is forced into exile for her friendship with Marie Antoinette (the subject of Nasland&#x2019;s novel, Abundance, 2006). It&#x2019;s a challenge to match the powerfully rendered drama of &#xC9;lisabeth&#x2019;s historic struggles with Kathryn&#x2019;s subtler suffering, and Naslund&#x2014;who has Kathryn admire Virginia Woolf while striving to write &#x201C;accessible&#x201D; fiction&#x2014;veers into contrivance and sentimentality. Still, this is an incisive and keenly pleasurable novel about women artists overcoming adversity to create &#x201C;joyful work&#x201D; that celebrates life&#x2019;s beauty and wonder. --Donna Seaman