The Nude
A Novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A Boston Globe Book We’re Most Excited About This Summer • An Electric Lit Queer Books You Need to Read this Summer • A Town & Country’s Best Book to Read This July • A Debutiful Noteworthy Debut of July • LitHub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024
A gripping, provocative, and sensual debut novel about an art historian who journeys to a Greek island in pursuit of a found sculpture and quickly finds herself immersed in a cultural tug-of-war and a complicated love affair.
1999: An island off the southern coast of Greece. Art historian Elizabeth Clarke arrives with the intent to acquire a rare female sculpture. But what begins as a quest for a highly valued cultural artifact evolves into a trip that will force Elizabeth to contend with her career, her ambition, and her troubling history.
Disoriented by jet lag, debilitating migraines, and a dependence on prescription pills, Elizabeth turns to her charming and guileless translator to guide her around the labyrinthine island. Soon, the island’s lushness—its heat and light, its textures and tastes—take hold of Elizabeth. And when she’s introduced to her translator’s inscrutable wife—a subversive artist whose work seeks to deconstruct the female form—she becomes unexpectedly enthralled by her. But once the nude’s acquisition proves to be riskier than Elizabeth could have ever imagined, Elizabeth’s and the statue’s fate are called into question. To find a way out, Elizabeth must grapple with her past, the role she’s played in the global art trade, and the ethical fallouts her decisions could leave behind.
The Nude is an evocative and intense exploration of art, cultural theft, and what it means to be a woman helming morally complicated negotiations in a male-directed world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lindley's enticing first novel explores the seamy side of the antiquities market. Soon after a fisherman reels in a stunning marble figure near a small Greek island, Dr. Elizabeth Clarke, a 30-something American specialist in female Hellenistic statues, arrives to assess it. The nude form, which is missing two arms, could be the perfect focal point at the Los Angeles museum where she's an assistant curator. Her boss, William, pressures her to make the acquisition, claiming that if she fails, her "coldness will be to blame." The stress exacerbates her chronic migraines, but her mood improves after she meets her translator, Niko, and his wife, Theo. Eager to connect with the enchanting Theo, Elizabeth pretends to understand her elliptical statement about the statue being"complicit" in its "un-freedom." Elizabeth loses herself to the island and the couple, imagining they want to sleep with her and failing to grasp Theo's much different ideas about what should be done with the statue (the details come out later). Things take a turn when one of the statue's missing arms mysteriously appears and vandals begin breaking into local museums. Lindley expertly dials up Elizabeth's paranoia and keeps the reader guessing as her mission's true purpose is thrown into question. This one's hard to shake.
