fucking superb. what a... not transcendental but something remarkably close to it. an experience for which i am at a loss for words, so writing this review is bittersweet to me, because writing this review meant that i finished reading this book.

sometimes i evaluate books i read based on "how much i liked character x/character y/the plot/the pace", or how much i was able to relate to certain variables. some narratives have that working for them, but in the case of THE LAST NUDE, liking characters is not so important. and whether any of these events were real (i learned belatedly that Tamara de Lempicka was real, which shows how little i know about the art world. i had to look up La Bella Rafaela, which is a familiar sight, but i knew very little about it). maybe i just don't know enough so it hardly mattered, that these details flew beyond my understanding. if it's any consolation, i knew of Sylvia Beach, of Gertrude and Alice, and Josephine Baker.

THE LAST NUDE made it hard to look away from the events that unfolded. despite anxious scenarios. despite the nerve-wracking evocations of feeling. the use of emotional understatement is spectacular, but i realized that it can be doubly-edged too. when else can you have the opportunity to speak beautifully of the event that breaks your heart? not often, i can imagine, and certainly not right after it happened, so i guess i understand Rafaela's concise statement of facts in that regard.

i know writers must know when to shut up, but with prose this delightful, with tone so perfectly in-tune, you'd hate for silence to come. but the silences. i love and loathe them. and i don't have to pitch myself into the dark Seine on a December night to feel arctic and desolate over how THE LAST NUDE ended. but one can be tempted.

And then I told my Saint Anthony the secret I have never told anyone since. She was the model for my best painting, I whispered. And what if I can't do better?

the desperation of an artist. what if this is the best thing i have ever done?

it haunts.



i appreciate the authorial decision not to muddle Rafaela's narrative with the criss-cross of the threads of Tamara's life. the fact that i get to empathize and focus only on one state sharpens the feelings there. i get to share Rafaela's single-mindedness, realize that I, too, share her "American absolutism," as Tamara said.

and i know, i know. in this economy, love is not enough, nor should it be. and this kind of optimism–willfully avoidant, implausible–is the stuff of pop songs, not the trouble that is literature. that's maybe why i do not feel slighted with the way THE LAST NUDE ended. it came with a startling clear understanding of how complex love and art and people can be. inasmuch as i want love to be simple, it's not. otherwise, what's the point.

Dear Ellis Avery. they said, never meet your heroes, but they never said i should not want to tell you that your prose sharpened how i look at the world. but since you're not on this mortal plane anymore, i guess all i can do is leave a review on goodreads and carry my gratitude for your prose for the rest of my days.

your words had me by the throat the moment i opened your book. i want to read you again. i wonder how i'll change then?