The Dissemblers
A young painter finds herself in over her head when she begins a career in art forgery in Campbell's mediocre debut. After graduating from art school, Ivy Wilkes moves to Santa Fe, N. Mex., gets a position at the Georgia O'Keeffe museum gift shop, and begins painting O'Keeffe replicas to hone her skills. Upon seeing the canvases, her neighbor, Maya, implausibly reveals that she's a dealer of art forgeries. After some mild conscience wrestling, Ivy agrees to let Maya sell her work and then, upon learning that one lie makes others come more easily, Ivy begins having an affair with Maya's boyfriend (in addition to sleeping with his cousin). The web of lies spun around the four begins to unravel when Ivy discovers that Maya hasn't been completely forthcoming, either, and a man shows up at the museum asking questions that threaten to undo the entire crazy operation. Campbell's characters have brief moments of sparkling humanity, but too much of the story is given over to navel-gazing and overphilosophizing.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.