Alive in Shape and Color
17 Paintings by Great Artists and the Stories They Inspired
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- HUF5,790.00
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- HUF5,790.00
Publisher Description
In his brilliant follow-up to In Sunlight or In Shadow, Lawrence Block has gathered together the best talent from popular fiction to produce an anthology as inventive as it is alluring, including Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, David Morrell, and Jeffery Deaver.
Even before Lawrence Block could rest on his laurels from In Sunlight or In Shadow, a question arose. What would he do for an encore?
Any number of artists have produced evocative work, paintings that could trigger a literary response. But none came to mind who could equal Hopper in turning out canvas after canvas. If no single artist could take Hopper’s place, how about a full palette of them? Suppose each author was invited to select a painting from the whole panoply of visual art—From the cave drawings at Lascaux to a contemporary abstract canvas on which the paint has barely dried.
And what a dazzling response! Joyce Carol Oates picked Le Beaux Jours by Balthus. Warren Moore chose Salvador Dali’s The Pharmacist of Ampurdam Seeking Absolutely Nothing. Michael Connelly, who sent Harry Bosch to Chicago for a close look at Nighthawks, has a go at The Garden of Earthly Delights by Harry’s namesake Hieronymous Bosch. S. J. Rozan finds a story in Hokusai’s The Great Wave, while Jeffery Deaver’s "A Significant Find” draws its inspiration from—yes—those prehistoric cave drawings at Lascaux. And Kristine Kathryn Rusch moves from painting to sculpture and selects Rodin.
In artists ranging from Art Frahm and Norman Rockwell to René Magritte and Clifford Still, the impressive concept goes on to include Thomas Pluck, Sarah Weinman, David Morrell, Craig Ferguson, Joe R. Lansdale, Jill D. Block, Justin Scott, Jonathan Santlofer, Gail Levin, Nicholas Christopher, and Lee Child, with each story accompanied in color by the work of art that inspired it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
MWA Grand Master Block follows 2016's In Sunlight or In Shadow which gathered stories inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper with an anthology whose theme is a bit more nebulous: stories inspired by iconic paintings, from the cave drawings at Lascaux to Georgia O'Keeffe's Red Cannas. Among the 16 contributors are such luminaries as Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child, and Michael Connelly, most of whom are best known for their thriller and mystery fiction. Standouts include David Morrell's Van Gogh inspired "Orange Is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity," which chronicles an artist's horrifying descent into madness; Jeffery Deaver's "A Significant Find," in which a husband-and-wife archeologist team makes what seems to be the discovery of a lifetime in the caves of southern France; and Joe R. Lansdale's "Charlie the Barber," which uses a charming Rockwell painting, First Trip to the Beauty Shop, as a jumping-off point for a horrifying tale about a robbery gone wrong. Other selections aren't so memorable. Still, the fascinating premise has yielded some dark gems that are worth the price of admission.