Painting the Light
A Novel
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- ¥1,500
発行者による作品情報
From the critically acclaimed author of Monticello and The Widow’s War comes a vividly rendered historical novel of love, loss, and reinvention, set on Martha’s Vineyard at the end of the nineteenth century.
Martha’s Vineyard, 1898. In her first life, Ida Russell had been a painter. Five years ago, she had confidently walked the halls of Boston’s renowned Museum School, enrolling in art courses that were once deemed “unthinkable” for women to take, and showing a budding talent for watercolors.
But no more. Ida Russell is now Ida Pease, resident of a seaside farm on Vineyard Haven, and wife to Ezra, a once-charming man who has become an inattentive and altogether unreliable husband. Ezra runs a salvage company in town with his business partner, Mose Barstow, but he much prefers their nightly card games at the local pub to his work in their Boston office, not to mention filling haystacks and tending sheep on the farm at home—duties that have fallen to Ida and their part-time farmhand, Lem. Ida, meanwhile, has left her love for painting behind.
It comes as no surprise to Ida when Ezra is hours late for a Thanksgiving dinner, only to leave abruptly for another supposedly urgent business trip to Boston. But then something unthinkable happens: a storm strikes and the ship carrying Ezra and Mose sinks.
In the wake of this shocking tragedy, Ida must settle the affairs of Ezra’s estate, a task that brings her to a familiar face from her past—Henry Barstow, Mose’s brother and executor. As she joins Henry in sifting through the remnants of her husband’s life and work, Ida must learn to separate truth from lies and what matters from what doesn’t.
Captured in rich, painterly prose—piercing as a coastal gale and shimmering as sunlight on the waves—Painting the Light is an arresting portrait of a woman, and a considered meditation on grief, persistence, and reinvention.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gunning (Monticello: A Daughter and Her Father) delivers an atmospheric, character-driven story of a young woman's struggle at the turn of the 20th century. Handsome charmer Ezra Pease's small but prosperous Martha's Vineyard sheep farm at first seemed idyllic to Ida, a place where she could pursue her interest in drawing and painting. Now, two years into their marriage, Ida realizes she'd made a hasty decision. Ezra, cold and distant, frequently leaves her to handle the farm while he's off operating a salvage vessel with his business partner, Mose Barstow. Then Ezra and Mose's ship goes down, with all passengers presumed dead, and Ida feels relief rather than loss. Over the next months, Ida experiences the joys and challenges of living a self-sufficient life: she learns how to ride a bicycle, wears trousers, resumes painting, and makes decisions about the flock. She also falls in love with Mose's married brother, Henry. Gunning writes beautifully of the landscape and farm life without romanticizing, and each character is vividly rendered without a smidge of excess backstory. Subplots about women's suffrage and a young orphaned relative seem underdeveloped, but in Ida, Gunning has created a captivating personality. This is one that lingers well after the final page is turned.
