Contrapposto
'A sublime act of fiction' DAVID MITCHELL
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- € 12,99
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Cricket is just a shy kid who likes drawing when he first meets Olympia. She’s older, more confident; she bullies him into some light vandalism and instantly he’s in love. When they’re together, they talk about their futures, how they’re going to travel the world, the beauty and rapture of art.
Then those futures start to arrive in unexpected ways, the years and decades pile up between them, the art world seduces and disappoints and frustrates them. And they have to figure out, again and again, what it is to be an artist, and who and what to love.
This is a wild and beautiful novel about two friends who believe they can change the world, if only they can start their own movement, dodge charlatans, remain open-eyed and open-hearted, avoid going mad, avoid dying young of rare cancers, stay true to their ideals and never tire of beauty. Not easy, but not impossible, either.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Eggers (The Every) unfurls a decades-spanning story of love and art. At 15, Cricket Dibb begins commuting from his home in 1980s Indiana to a drawing class in Chicago, believing it's time to take his work seriously if he ever wants to become a real artist. His talent attracts the attention of classmate Olympia Argyros, a fearless girl one year older, who encourages him to exhibit his nude life drawings at his school library. Cricket falls in love with Olympia, but she's restless and fickle. Meanwhile, he finds solace in his friendship with Jed, his coworker at a convenience store, after his drawings are banned from the library. Later, ROTC graduate Jed gets deployed to Kuwait during the Gulf War and dies in a freak accident, inspiring Olympia to curate an installation in his honor. Olympia flits in and out of Cricket's life, stoking his erotic and emotional devotion ("She'd always felt free to touch any part of him at any time, and he did not mind"). As Cricket reaches middle age, he has melancholy but sanguine epiphanies about a life dedicated to art and his enduring passion for Olympia ("Every year Cricket felt more—of everything—and every year his eyes had only gotten better, younger, his aperture opening, opening, opening"). It's a tour de force.
