A Review of Robin Oliveira’s I Always Loved You

By Kim

About I Always Loved You (from the book jacket):

The young Mary Cassatt never thought moving to Paris after the Civil War was going to be easy, but when, after a decade of work, her submission to the Paris Salon is rejected, Mary’s fierce determination wavers. Her father is imploring her to return to Philadelphia to find a husband before it is too late, her sister Lydia is falling mysteriously ill, and worse, Mary is beginning to doubt herself. Then one evening a friend introduces her to Edgar Degas and her live changes forever. Years later she will learn that he begged the introduction, but in that moment their meeting seems a miracle. So begins the defining period of her life and the most tempestuous of relationships.

In I Always Loved You, Robin Oliveira brilliantly re-creates the irresistible world of Belle Époque Paris, writing with grace and uncommon insight into the passion and foibles of the human heart.

Photo by Deborah Downes

About Robin Oliveira (from the book jacket):

Robin Oliveira is the New York Times bestselling author of My Name is Mary Sutter. She holds a BA in Russian and studied at the Pushkin Language Institute in Moscow. She received an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is also a registered nurse, specializing in critical care. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

My Review:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this photo says it all. That’s my copy of I Always Loved You. Each sticker represents a passage of extreme brilliance, one that I likely read over two or three times before marking the spot and continuing on. You can’t see all of them, by any means.

I knew from the first page that this was a novel that would stay with me well after I finished it. When I came to this passage on page 43, after swallowing a lump of writer’s envy, the book shot into my top ten books of all time:

“Mary thought he might as well have said he had seen her at her bath, had seen the imperfections of her figure, had spied the most personal things about her. Instead, he was undressing her mind and rummaging around in the pleats and folds of her brain, a voyeurism more intimately invasive than any physical violation would have been.”

This passage was taken from the scene where Mary Cassatt first meets Edgar Degas. That tired old cliché about being able to cut the sexual tension with a knife does no justice to Oliveira’s portrayal of their relationship. In this case, you can’t chop through the tension with an ax. Every glance, every touch, nearly every word exchanged between the two is charged. The scenes where one or the other creates art in presence of the other are especially sensual.

While it is not necessary to have knowledge of the Impressionists to enjoy I Always Loved You, it will add a further layer of tension if you do. Any love story involving Edgar Degas could not be conventional in scope and will not involve a happily ever after unless the author takes major liberties with history, which Oliveira does not. What she does do, brilliantly, is find the story hiding in a gap of known history. After Degas’ death, why did Mary Cassatt search his apartment for her letters to him? Why did she burn she burn both sides of the correspondence when she sensed her own end was near?

Interwoven into the novel is a second, yet equally doomed, love story between painters Édouard Manet and his sister-in-law Berthe Morisot. Some reviewers thought this story detracted from the first, but I disagree. I believe it enhanced readers’ understanding of the societal constraints of the time and served as an interesting foil to the Degas/Cassatt plot line.

I made the mistake of reading the ending of I Always Loved You at a local Starbucks, mentally cursing my eyes for clouding up (much like Degas’) and preventing me from reading easily. It wasn't until I closed the book that I fully realized the “cloud” was tears. On my way out, the barista asked what book I had been reading because she wanted a copy.

I Always Loved You is literary historical fiction at its best. Highly recommended.

Have you read this novel? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Some Quotes for an April Day

Here are some fun quotes we enjoy, definitely What Women Write. About what women write, how women write, why women write. Thanks to An Uncommon Scold, compiled by Abby Adams, for the quotes. And to the ladies, of course.

It's not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone with them.

--Isabel Colegate

The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes.

--Agatha Christie

I've made characters live, so that people talk about them at cocktail parties, and that, to me, is what counts.

--Jacqueline Susann

My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.

--Anne Tyler

Once the grammar has been learned (writing) is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.

--Beryl Bainbridge

Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle, or anything, anything, than nothing at all.

--Katherine Mansfield

April Fools, April Smarts

by Elizabeth

On Friday, Susan talked about literacy. In a list of sad statistics, what struck me the most was the depressing fact that over half the low-income households in our country contain no childrens' books inside. I can't imagine my own childhood sans books. My own kids spend probably half their leisure hours with their noses  stuffed into a story, and we are fortunate, I realize, to have shelves crammed with books throughout our house.

Tomorrow is April Fool's Day. Why don't we all do something about that?

The May 1 when my daughter was two, we visited the local flower shop and bought a dozen roses, then stood on the walking trail and she handed them out with a "Happy May Day!" I love that archaic holiday, a completely selfless celebration of beauty. No one much celebrates it in the 21st Century, which is a shame as far as I'm concerned. Since that first flash of brilliance on that spring morning, nearly every year we've made May Day bouquets. We usually target a woman over sixty as the recipient, though they've been gifted to friends, relatives, strangers, teachers. Delight is the universal response, and in a month, we'll repeat the tradition.

But now, inspired by the statistic of too many homes having too few books, I've decided to start a new ritual. I'm going to hand out books. Mostly to kids. "April Smarts!" I'll say, and I'll resist the urge to slip a spider down the back of their shirt as I hand off a copy of Junie B. Jones or Harry Potter or whatever story the child chooses from my stash. Probably I'll concentrate on little kids the most, partly because those are the kids I'll be able to easily encounter while my own kids are in school all day. But I'll have a variety of books on hand, from picture books to engrossing reads that might turn a thirteen-year-old on the cusp of becoming a lifelong non-reader into a bookworm. And yes, I'll head beyond my usual comfortable middle-class stomping grounds and seek out families who might not have the disposable income to say "Yes" if "Can I buy this book?" is asked. Sure, I realize this probably isn't going to dramatically change anyone's life. But it might change their day, and who knows what happens from there.

Want to join me? April Smarts Day is tomorrow. I'm going to gather at least 20 books to give away to kids (and maybe a few to hand off to adults as well). What about you?

A Literate World

By Susan

Pamela wrote on Wednesday about reading and writing poetry to broaden your mind, vocabulary, and to improve your writing skills.

This week I planned to piggyback on her post by writing about the benefits of reading short stories. Instead, I stumbled over several statistics regarding literacy rates and decided to save my short story post for another week. Today, here are a few statistics I wanted to share:

• Only 50% of America's population reads at or above an 8^th grade reading level.
• 21% of Americans read below the 5^th grade reading level.    
• Between 69%-85% of America's prison population* is illiterate. (Take a moment and allow that to sink in.)
• 80% of US families did not buy a book this year.
• Over 60% of low-income families have no children's books in the home. 

I assume if you are reading this blog that writing and reading topics are important to you, and that these statistics may not apply to you or your household. In many ways, you may feel helpless to change any of these statistics, and yet I feel that you can. Here are a few resources and programs to consider.

Donate books and money:

         The International Book Project ships gently used books around the world and domestically.  In Kentucky, where they are based, they also partner with Habitat for Humanity to provide a home library for new homes constructed for low-income families.
First Book ships new books around the world to school and programs designated for low income children.
The Prison Book Project in Massachusetts collects and ships gently used books to prisons around the country. (I've looked into private book donations directly to prisons, but they cannot accept books unless they are from approved organizations.) 

Give your time:

• ·      Through your local United Way, you can volunteer to be a reader to children, a tutor to students, or a mentor to both children and adults working to improve their literacy.
• ·      Through TESOL, you can be trained and teach English as a second language here in the US. Need is particularly great in California, Texas, Florida, Illinois and New York.
• ·      Start a book club. Our own Pamela leads a book club at a local nursing home for older readers. Not only do studies show that reading helps delay Alzheimer's, reading with a group of more experienced readers can help broaden your world-view, as well.
• ·      Contact your local library for opportunities to volunteer or to help with reading programs.

*prison illiteracy rates vary by source. The first statistic I came across stated that only 15% of inmates are literate. Other stats said 31%, so I included both. 

Poetry-minded

By Pamela

Tucked away in my dresser, behind a tangle of tights and scarves, is a book of poems I contributed to in high school. Some bear my byline; others I wrote for a boy in my class who was too stoned to write his own--my first foray into ghost-writing, I suppose. In college I took an advanced English class and wrote more poems, long since discarded as binding them into a book required more forethought than our professor possessed and, by that age, parents were hardly clamoring to discover what we were writing in class.

Old Barn by Mike on Flickr

Since then poetry has been that distant cousin--someone I seldom see but enjoy immensely when I do. And then Friday night, during Ron Rash's talk at the DMA, something clicked. After sharing his writing process and listing his published endeavors--novels, short story collections and books of poetry--he began to read from his book of short stories Nothing Gold Can Stay. "Three A.M. and the Stars Were Out" features two men in a barn, birthing a calf. Hardly the stuff of poets, but poetry it was:

The men sat on the barn floor, weary arms crossed on raised knees as they waited for the calf to gain its legs. Carson leaned his head on his forearms and closed his eyes. He listened as the calf's hooves scattered straw, the body lifting and falling back until it figured out the physics. Once it did, Carson raised his head and watched the calf's knees wobble but hold. The cow was soon up too. The calf nuzzled and found a teat, began to suckle. 

The cadence in his phrasing--made even more lyrical with Rash's southern lilt--brings a poetic quality to the story that might seem rote in someone else's less-capable hands. Later he read a scene from another story that followed a young girl as she got caught up in the rapids and drowned. While both captivating and heartbreaking, Rash later said he rewrote the scene, which sounded effortless, about 25 times.

One of my favorite authors is Elizabeth Berg, not because her stories are particularly spellbinding, in fact, I sometimes confuse one story for another, but because her gift of language in describing an ordinary scene (particularly those with dialog) is poetic. Case in point, here's one of her recent posts on Facebook:

It is my habit, most mornings, to come into the living room with my first cup of coffee, to sit on the sofa and read a poem and then hold still, waiting for gratitude. It always comes, when I make space in the day for it. And I am reminded then of the beauty we enjoy despite the despair we endure. So as the sky lightens and a new day offers itself for consideration, I sip coffee and notice small things: a bird on a wire. A sky the color of weak tea, if tea were blue. The space beneath a table. The trumpetish formation of the petals on a miniature daffodil plant.
This accumulation of small, gentle things acts as counterpoint to the insults of yesterday: an account in the paper of child abuse, the worsening effects of climate change, Putin’s bullying; the invention of a watch/computer to serve as “companion” to your smart phone, first incarnation already obsolete. I sit in the quiet living room and watch the birds and the day breaking and rid myself of those other things as though they were burrs at my hem. I leave them lying there. I can’t destroy them, but I can leave them lying there while I go into the kitchen for cinnamon toast, the slices as thick as a small town phone book. And then, body and spirit buoyed up, I can come back and stand before them, hands on my hips, and consider what to do.

Her comment about starting most days with reading poetry wasn't lost on me. Surely her work is influenced by the reading of poetry just as Rash's work is buoyed by the fact that he is a poet who also writes novels and short stories. And so my goal is now to immerse myself in poetry. To lend my ear to the rhythm of the words and phrasing. Susan recommended I start with:

• Mary Oliver
• Good Poems, an anthology edited by Garrison Keillor
• "Aimless Love" by Billy Collins, a poet laureate
• Natasha Trethewey
• Frank X Walker, poet and editor of Pluck!, the journal of Affrilachian arts and culture 
• Maurice Manning, Kentucky poet and educator
• Sylvia Plath

Serendipitously, April is NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month), and so we have less than a week to organize our thoughts and jump in with this to stretch our imaginations and see if we can write a poem a day. If that feels too ambitious, at least READ a poem each day, perhaps commit a favorite one to memory. I know I'm on board. Care to join me?

A Night at the Museum

By Elizabeth

Last week, Joan, Pamela and I braved Friday night traffic and ventured to the Dallas Museum of Art in downtown Dallas to listen to Ron Rash and Dan Woodrell talk books. It was no small feat for any of the three of us: Joan was coming off work, I've been crazy with family stuff, and Pamela had just had a really tough day. But we made it, and we were all glad we did.


Ron Rash (foreground) and Daniel Woodrell sign
 books after their talk at the DMA. 

For one thing, it was, as pretty much ever, fun to hear writers talk about their process, their ideas, their agonies and delights in this endeavor. But I think that night, even more than usual, it was just really good to get together with kindred minds and talk. About books, yes, including Rash's and Woodrell's. Anyone who encountered me last summer probably couldn't get me to shut up about Rash's works, three of which I consumed in fast order as the temperatures soared. (Serena; The Cove; and a selection of short stories, Nothing Gold Can Stay) Both Joan and Pamela bought a tome from each man's collection, and I expect to shortly hear them rave in a fashion not unlike mine. (Well, maybe not with the same zeal, less likely than me to accost strangers at Target. But still.)

That night, though, I have to say, even more than the author talk was just our simple talk afterward. Yes, we discussed our works-in-progress, where we are and where we're headed, and we talked about other books we've read and loved recently, but we also just talked about ourselves. About life and kids and joy and tragedy and it reminded me that as much as I love books, sometimes we need to pull our noses out of them and just go have some fun. Sometimes we need other people to remind us to get out and do, go and live, to love and to be.

Woodrell's latest book, The Maid's Version, is about a real-life tragedy that changed the course of a town and the lives of its inhabitants for generations. As he read selections from it, read his description of a doomed woman who lived a questionably moral life unapologetically up until the day she perished, I thought about the decisions we all make and how they might not affect our outcome at all. This particular woman lived a short hard life, but it was not cut short because of that, but rather because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I guess the question that rises, at least for me, is if she had known her time was so short, would she have made the same choices? Would I?

Would you?


An Evening With Ross King

By Kim

Those of you who follow our blog may have noticed that we love posting about author events. With two ballerina daughters in constant rehearsal and poor night vision that makes driving a precarious adventure, it’s rare for me to be in attendance. One event I refused to miss was author and art historian Ross King’s lecture at the Highland Park United Methodist Church on the SMU campus on March 18th. 

My correspondence with King began back in 2009 while he wrote his phenomenal book Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven. His research uncovered mention of a landscape painter named Carl Ahrens who, in 1916, verbally attacked certain members of the Group. Intrigued, King found my website on Ahrens (my great-grandfather) and contacted me, hoping I could shed light on what might have provoked his remarks.

What you can't see is how much he gallantly stoops! *

I replied with a small treatise on the subject and also provided King with primary sources and the photograph of Ahrens featured in Defiant Spirits.  Over the years we've periodically traded e-mails and he has assisted me with sections of my manuscript that involve the Group of Seven and the WWI Toronto art community. I could not ask for a more gracious and knowledgeable expert.

King is a master at bringing art history to life in vivid, novelistic detail. His prose is literary, yet accessible, and never, ever dull. I devoured Defiant Spirits (420 pages) in a weekend. Joan Mora raved about Brunelleschi’s Dome. King’s latest book, Leonardo and The Last Supper, looks equally riveting.

Joan, a fan of all things Italian, also attended the lecture, as did my mother, who happily snapped the photograph for this post. (Thanks, Mom!)

At the pre-lecture reception, King inscribed books and chatted with anyone who came over to introduce themselves. He reminded me of my favorite college professor, a brilliant yet approachable intellectual. Undaunted by the line, he rushed no one. To those waiting behind us, I offer a virtual apology. I know we took more than our fair share of time when he offered to pose for photographs then rather than risk missing the opportunity later.

King spoke eloquently for the better part of an hour about Leonardo da Vinci and the stories behind how he came to paint his masterpiece, The Last Supper. As in his books, King did not shy away from pointing out his subject’s shortcomings. Leonardo’s contemporaries complained he stared at walls more than painted them and was often distracted by seemingly unrelated projects when he should have been working on his commissions. He also grossly exaggerated his expertise to win favor with Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan. The Last Supper, contrary to popular belief, is not a fresco. It turns out that Leonardo’s creative process did not allow for working in such a piecemeal and rushed fashion. He experimented instead, which explains why the painting had already started to disintegrate in Leonardo’s lifetime.

If King had notes, I never saw them; he certainly never looked down. This is especially remarkable because he speaks using the same densely rich language in which he writes. At one point I glanced back to see if he used a teleprompter because I thought no one could have such an encyclopedic memory for names and dates. (I stand corrected.) King’s unusual accent, a melding of Canadian and Oxford English, combined with his height, confident tone, and gesticulating hands, make him an especially dynamic and authoritative speaker.

If you ever get the chance to see a Ross King lecture, don’t miss it. You may feel smarter simply being in the same room. I know I did.

* Photo by Deborah Downes