num_pages: 342
description: Seven portraits. Seven artists. Seven girls and women reading. A young orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena and an artist's servant girl in 17th-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. A young woman reading in a Shoreditch bar catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture and a Victorian medium holds a book that she barely acknowledges while she waits for the exposure. Each chapter of this richly textured debut takes us into a perfectly imagined tale of how each portrait came to be and as the connections accumulate the narrative leads us into the present and beyond - an inspired celebration of women reading and the artists who have caught them in the act.
language: English
title: Girl Reading
publisher: Virago Press (UK)