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’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, popular and conceptually adventurous Naslund (Adam & 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 “Venus Rising from the Sea,” a graceful embodiment of the novel’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 Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1755–1842). After surviving childhood loss and a disastrous marriage to become a renowned portraitist, Élisabeth is forced into exile for her friendship with Marie Antoinette (the subject of Nasland’s novel, Abundance, 2006). It’s a challenge to match the powerfully rendered drama of Élisabeth’s historic struggles with Kathryn’s subtler suffering, and Naslund—who has Kathryn admire Virginia Woolf while striving to write “accessible” fiction—veers into contrivance and sentimentality. Still, this is an incisive and keenly pleasurable novel about women artists overcoming adversity to create “joyful work” that celebrates life’s beauty and wonder. --Donna Seaman