An Object of Beauty
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3.5 • 13 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
'Think The Devil Wears Prada with paintbrushes' Grazia
Lacey Yeager is beautiful, captivating, and ambitious enough to take the New York art world by storm.
She sparkles in auction houses, selling Old Master paintings to the fabulously wealthy, and in edgy Downtown galleries, filled with Hirsts and Warhols. Charming men and women, old and young, rich and even richer, Lacey's ascendancy seems assured.
But when the art world bubble looks set to burst, a secret from her past rears its head, threatening to undermine everything she has worked for . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Martin compresses the wild and crazy end of the millennium and finds in this piercing novel a sardonic morality tale. Lacey Yeager is an ambitious young art dealer who uses everything at her disposal to advance in the world of the high-end art trade in New York City. After cutting her teeth at Sotheby's, she manipulates her way up through Barton Talley's gallery of "Very Expensive Paintings," sleeping with patrons, and dodging and indulging in questionable deals, possible felonies, and general skeeviness until she opens her own gallery in Chelsea. Narrated by Lacey's journalist friend, Daniel Franks, whose droll voice is a remarkable stand-in for Martin's own, the world is ordered and knowable, blindly barreling onward until 9/11. And while Lacey and the art she peddles survive, the wealth and prestige garnered by greed do not. Martin (an art collector himself) is an astute miniaturist as he exposes the sound and fury of the rarified Manhattan art world. If Shopgirl was about the absence of purpose, this book is about the absence of a moral compass, not just in the life of an adventuress but for an entire era.
Customer Reviews
An engaging portrait
I am not a connoisseur of art, but in this novel Steve Martin made me feel like I could be. Through the book he gives an engaging and entertaining portrait of the New York art scene, at the same time educating me about art and how to look at it but also the business of it. The character of the protagonist, Lacey feels honest and compelling. The ending though feels slightly rushed and in the final pages the focus is turned away from Lacey in order to give the book an emotional depth that felt contrived. This small gripe about the ending should not dissuade you from reading this highly entertaining and intelligent book.