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The Last Nude
“As erotic and powerful as the paintings that inspired it.”—Emma Donoghue, author of RoomParis, 1927. In the heady years before the crash, financiers drape their mistresses in Chanel, while expatriates flock to the avant-garde bookshop Shakespeare and Company. One day in July, a young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a coolly dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka.Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist, a dispossessed Saint Petersburg aristocrat with a murky past. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara's most iconic Jazz Age images, among them her most accomplished-and coveted-works of art. A season as the painter's muse teaches Rafaela some hard Tamara is a cocktail of raw hunger and glittering artifice. And all the while, their romantic idyll is threatened by history's darkening tide.
Inspired by real events in de Lempicka's history, The Last Nude is a tour de force of historical imagination. Ellis Avery gives the reader a tantalizing window into a lost Paris, an age already vanishing as the inexorable forces of history close in on two tangled lives. Spellbinding and provocative, this is a novel about genius and craft, love and desire, regret and, most of all, hope that can transcend time and circumstance.
Inspired by real events in de Lempicka's history, The Last Nude is a tour de force of historical imagination. Ellis Avery gives the reader a tantalizing window into a lost Paris, an age already vanishing as the inexorable forces of history close in on two tangled lives. Spellbinding and provocative, this is a novel about genius and craft, love and desire, regret and, most of all, hope that can transcend time and circumstance.
354 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 5, 2012
227 people are currently reading
22790 people want to read
About the author
Ellis Avery
10 books105 followersThe only writer ever to have received the American Library Association Stonewall Award for Fiction twice, Ellis Avery is the author of two novels, a memoir, and a book of poetry. Her novels, The Last Nude (Riverhead 2012) and The Teahouse Fire (Riverhead 2006) have also received Lambda, Ohioana, and Golden Crown awards, and her work has been translated into six languages. She teaches fiction writing at Columbia University and out of her home in the West Village.
Raised in Columbus, Ohio and Princeton, New Jersey, Avery’s first love as a reader was the high fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula K. LeGuin. In her teenage years, she discovered writers like Annie Dillard and Virginia Woolf, whose lush specificity tempted her back to the waking world.
Interested in the overlap between theater, anthropology, and religion, Avery pursued an independent major in Performance Studies at Bryn Mawr College, graduating in 1993. She spent the next few years in San Francisco working for queer youth organizations and earning an MFA in Writing from Goddard College’s low residency program. Drawn back to the seasons and architecture of the East Coast, she settled in New York in 1997, where she met her partner of fifteen years, Sharon Marcus.
After personally witnessing the devastation of September 11th, 2001, and the anti-war response that swept the city in its wake, Avery wrote her first book, a personal account of the attacks and their aftermath entitled The Smoke Week. She spent five years studying Japanese language and tea ceremony, including seven months in Kyoto, in order to write her first novel, The Teahouse Fire. A lifelong love of Paris in the 1920s led Avery to write her second novel, The Last Nude, a love letter to Sylvia Beach, founder of Shakespeare and Company bookshop and publisher of Ulysses; to Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast; and to the sleek Art Deco imagery of Tamara de Lempicka.
Raised in Columbus, Ohio and Princeton, New Jersey, Avery’s first love as a reader was the high fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula K. LeGuin. In her teenage years, she discovered writers like Annie Dillard and Virginia Woolf, whose lush specificity tempted her back to the waking world.
Interested in the overlap between theater, anthropology, and religion, Avery pursued an independent major in Performance Studies at Bryn Mawr College, graduating in 1993. She spent the next few years in San Francisco working for queer youth organizations and earning an MFA in Writing from Goddard College’s low residency program. Drawn back to the seasons and architecture of the East Coast, she settled in New York in 1997, where she met her partner of fifteen years, Sharon Marcus.
After personally witnessing the devastation of September 11th, 2001, and the anti-war response that swept the city in its wake, Avery wrote her first book, a personal account of the attacks and their aftermath entitled The Smoke Week. She spent five years studying Japanese language and tea ceremony, including seven months in Kyoto, in order to write her first novel, The Teahouse Fire. A lifelong love of Paris in the 1920s led Avery to write her second novel, The Last Nude, a love letter to Sylvia Beach, founder of Shakespeare and Company bookshop and publisher of Ulysses; to Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast; and to the sleek Art Deco imagery of Tamara de Lempicka.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 473 reviews
April 11, 2023
A sensual drama that explores the line between inspiration and exploitation in art and love. With alluring prose charged with emotion, the Last Nude is a study in what makes art groundbreaking, what sets creative minds apart from the rest. It is also an examination of the hearts artists are willing to break to achieve greatness; the lies they will tell to create the boldest pieces. This novel handles the devastating effects of betrayal and obsession with authentic candor, this is a highlight of modern art and it’s turbulent figures.
September 5, 2012
I haven't given five stars to a book in a long time, so that's something!
This was such a beautiful book to read. I loved the subtle, smooth writing style, the descriptions of everyday objects and happenings, the way the characters' eyes opened in different ways...I loved all of it.
I even loved the switch of perspective at the end -- which, judging from many reviews, most people did not like or were uncomfortable with -- where we enter the mind of the person in the story whom we most come to revile. I love when the "bad" characters get to tell their side, when they become less two-dimensional and more human. We see them -- like a painting or photograph we might not have seen for many years -- in a different light.
I was so moved my the descriptions of the paintings, that I frequently found myself visiting a website showcasing all of Tamara de Lempicka's work. I did this at least four times during different parts of the novel. I would click through them, fascinated by the stories each one tells. (There are at least four of de Lempicka's paintings that I would love to have on my walls.)
I love how Avery brought these human beings to life, while adding many imaginative and bittersweet twists.
This was such a beautiful book to read. I loved the subtle, smooth writing style, the descriptions of everyday objects and happenings, the way the characters' eyes opened in different ways...I loved all of it.
I even loved the switch of perspective at the end -- which, judging from many reviews, most people did not like or were uncomfortable with -- where we enter the mind of the person in the story whom we most come to revile. I love when the "bad" characters get to tell their side, when they become less two-dimensional and more human. We see them -- like a painting or photograph we might not have seen for many years -- in a different light.
I was so moved my the descriptions of the paintings, that I frequently found myself visiting a website showcasing all of Tamara de Lempicka's work. I did this at least four times during different parts of the novel. I would click through them, fascinated by the stories each one tells. (There are at least four of de Lempicka's paintings that I would love to have on my walls.)
I love how Avery brought these human beings to life, while adding many imaginative and bittersweet twists.
December 11, 2011
When is a muse an inspiration and when is she a plaything? The distinction is hazy in Ellis Avery’s The Last Nude.
1927 Paris, Rafaela only wants a hundred francs to buy a black dress so she can take over her flat mate’s department store job. In danger of falling into prostitution, she meets Tamara De Lempicka, painter of exotic, sexy Art Deco, and poses for several paintings.
Although outside the parameters of what I usually read, this period piece is well written and sensual. The writer skillfully paints the decadent lifestyle of artists of the time. The passion of the two women grows as does their disparate outlooks on life. Characters are well defined. We grow to despise the self-centered, manipulative Lempicka and empathize with Rafaela’s lost naiveté. Readers will glimpse the artistic culture of 1920s Paris and enter the world of erotic lesbianism. The book ends with dangling threads as it suddenly abandons the women’s relationship to finish Lempicka’s story.
Ellis Avery, inspired by a 1927 Lempicka oil painting called, Beautiful Rafaela, recreates their relationship in her second historical fiction novel. Another painting from their affair, The Dream is the cover art for the book. In an interview, Avery explains that Jazz Age Paris provided the “environment in which a number of different kinds of romantic and sexual relationships between women flourished in a way they rarely had before.” Ms. Avery took a weeklong intensive figure-painting class to learn what it’s like on the other side of the brush.
Penguin’s Riverhead Books Division graciously supplied the advance review copy for my unbiased opinion. The book releases January 5, 2012.
Reviewed by Holly Weiss, author of
Crestmont
1927 Paris, Rafaela only wants a hundred francs to buy a black dress so she can take over her flat mate’s department store job. In danger of falling into prostitution, she meets Tamara De Lempicka, painter of exotic, sexy Art Deco, and poses for several paintings.
Although outside the parameters of what I usually read, this period piece is well written and sensual. The writer skillfully paints the decadent lifestyle of artists of the time. The passion of the two women grows as does their disparate outlooks on life. Characters are well defined. We grow to despise the self-centered, manipulative Lempicka and empathize with Rafaela’s lost naiveté. Readers will glimpse the artistic culture of 1920s Paris and enter the world of erotic lesbianism. The book ends with dangling threads as it suddenly abandons the women’s relationship to finish Lempicka’s story.
Ellis Avery, inspired by a 1927 Lempicka oil painting called, Beautiful Rafaela, recreates their relationship in her second historical fiction novel. Another painting from their affair, The Dream is the cover art for the book. In an interview, Avery explains that Jazz Age Paris provided the “environment in which a number of different kinds of romantic and sexual relationships between women flourished in a way they rarely had before.” Ms. Avery took a weeklong intensive figure-painting class to learn what it’s like on the other side of the brush.
Penguin’s Riverhead Books Division graciously supplied the advance review copy for my unbiased opinion. The book releases January 5, 2012.
Reviewed by Holly Weiss, author of
Crestmont
April 2, 2012
This book was divided in to two parts..the first 80% was told from the viewpoint of Rafaela, a 17 year old runaway who has been prostituting herself to unattractive, wealthy men to get by in 1920's Paris. She meets female painter Tamara, who offers her money to pose nude. They begin a sexual relationship, which Rafaela believes is a love affair...however, she finds out that Tamara has been cruelly plotting behind her back to win the affections of a Baron and become his wife. They have a telling, dramatic fight where Tamara laughs at Rafaela and says "Do you think I would marry you? You can not make me a baroness! You can not give me a child" and Rafaela is stunned to learn that she has been used by a woman in the same way she's been used by men.
Had that been the whole book, I would have given it four stars, because Rafaela's tale is absorbing and complicated and the descriptions of the decadent Parisian lifestyle is spot on...but the end of the book for some confusing reason switches to Tamara's point of view as an old woman and it's just senile rambling about her past, where you see she was even more manipulative than imagined. this part of the book really took away from the novel. It should have ended with Rafaela's story.
Had that been the whole book, I would have given it four stars, because Rafaela's tale is absorbing and complicated and the descriptions of the decadent Parisian lifestyle is spot on...but the end of the book for some confusing reason switches to Tamara's point of view as an old woman and it's just senile rambling about her past, where you see she was even more manipulative than imagined. this part of the book really took away from the novel. It should have ended with Rafaela's story.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 18, 2014
With razor-sharp prose and an unapologetic lack of sentimentality, THE LAST NUDE depicts a pivotal time in 1920s Paris, during the life of the acclaimed Art Deco painter, Tamara Lempicka, and her tumultuous affair with an American-born teenage muse, Rafaela, immortalized in Lempicka's work, "La Bella Rafaela."
Told almost entirely in Rafaela's jaded yet inherently naive voice, we enter the linseed-scented studio and hedonistic lifestyle of the enigmatic Tamara, whose bisexuality and obscure past lends her an irresistible mystique. At only fifteen years of age, Rafaela has fled her New York City home and staid disappointments of her family to join the restless youth milling about the City of Light. She meets such iconic figures as Sylvia Beach, founder of the Shakespeare & Co. bookshop, and other society figures as she becomes both Tamara's principal model and lover, her own ambivalent feelings toward sex awakened to a fever-pitch by Tamara's robust, glossy depictions of her on canvas. But Tamara is far more than she seems, and Rafaela, despite her street-wise veneer, becomes lost in a web of the artist's design, unaware that as she dreams of love everlasting, Tamara strives only for recognition and security at any cost.
Ellis Avery is an exceptionally talented and under-appreciated writer whose prior novel "The Teahouse Fire" offered a lush portrayal of Japan. Here, she is in her element: THE LAST NUDE is almost terse yet also deeply evocative, unflinching in its paucity of florid description and searing in its focus on two women from two different worlds, whose passionate collision sets off what, in retrospect, becomes an inevitable chain of events. While Rafaela dominates the narrative, Tamara's presence is inescapable. Sleek as a panther, her long fingers paint-spattered and her nerve cold as the sculpted drapery of her portraits, she embodies the Paris she inhabits - where what you pretend to be is more important than who you are, and everything has its price. In a refreshing departure from stories of tortured artists suffering for their craft, Tamara exudes ambition and charisma. She knows what she has, and how to sell it. Her interactions with Rafaela, whose adoration careens against the slow-burning, ultimately crushing realization that her lover has claws, are riveting, sexy, and true to life.
The last part of the novel offers a glimpse into Tamara's later years, as a retrospective of her work launches her into new-found appreciation; the contrast with what has come before is masterful and chilling, a fitting conclusion to a love story that cannot have a happy ending yet lingers in our memory, as haunting as those who lived it.
Told almost entirely in Rafaela's jaded yet inherently naive voice, we enter the linseed-scented studio and hedonistic lifestyle of the enigmatic Tamara, whose bisexuality and obscure past lends her an irresistible mystique. At only fifteen years of age, Rafaela has fled her New York City home and staid disappointments of her family to join the restless youth milling about the City of Light. She meets such iconic figures as Sylvia Beach, founder of the Shakespeare & Co. bookshop, and other society figures as she becomes both Tamara's principal model and lover, her own ambivalent feelings toward sex awakened to a fever-pitch by Tamara's robust, glossy depictions of her on canvas. But Tamara is far more than she seems, and Rafaela, despite her street-wise veneer, becomes lost in a web of the artist's design, unaware that as she dreams of love everlasting, Tamara strives only for recognition and security at any cost.
Ellis Avery is an exceptionally talented and under-appreciated writer whose prior novel "The Teahouse Fire" offered a lush portrayal of Japan. Here, she is in her element: THE LAST NUDE is almost terse yet also deeply evocative, unflinching in its paucity of florid description and searing in its focus on two women from two different worlds, whose passionate collision sets off what, in retrospect, becomes an inevitable chain of events. While Rafaela dominates the narrative, Tamara's presence is inescapable. Sleek as a panther, her long fingers paint-spattered and her nerve cold as the sculpted drapery of her portraits, she embodies the Paris she inhabits - where what you pretend to be is more important than who you are, and everything has its price. In a refreshing departure from stories of tortured artists suffering for their craft, Tamara exudes ambition and charisma. She knows what she has, and how to sell it. Her interactions with Rafaela, whose adoration careens against the slow-burning, ultimately crushing realization that her lover has claws, are riveting, sexy, and true to life.
The last part of the novel offers a glimpse into Tamara's later years, as a retrospective of her work launches her into new-found appreciation; the contrast with what has come before is masterful and chilling, a fitting conclusion to a love story that cannot have a happy ending yet lingers in our memory, as haunting as those who lived it.
January 8, 2012
Historical fiction is, essentially, literary fan fiction. It’s the literary part that gives it more cred than “Friday Night Lights” superfans hanging out on a bulletin board dreamily considering what if Julie Taylor came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her lips flushed and red, her skin dewy, and found Tim Riggins, primed, and sweating Red Stripe from his pores into her duvet. But at it’s core it is still fan fiction, with a high percentage of words spelled correctly and void of emoticons and poorly-written sex scenes.
With “The Last Nude,” Ellis Avery considers the subject of 1920s art deco artist Tamara De Lempicka’s six-painting Rafaela series. The art deco portraits star a heavy-lidded woman with soft rounds of flesh, all red scarves and lipsticks and shading. She was one of many women De Lempicka painted and, of course, with whom the artist got all deep sighs and panty. The novel is about their blip of a relationship set in the edgy, ex-pat heavy, Jazz Era in Paris and features cameos from some the eras major players including Violette Morris, a female boxer turned Nazi informer, and Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare & Company, publishers of “Ulysses.”
Rafaela is an American girl who is en route to Italy for an arranged marriage when she jumps ship with a creeper to forge a life for herself in Paris instead. She is intrigued by a Coco Chanel dress she saw once and resorts to doling out sexual favors in exchange for a new life. She goes a bit wild-child, dancing on tables and diddling married men with her roommate Gin. De Lempicka finds the girl in a seedy prostitute hangout. Rafaela is looking for a friend; De Lempicka is looking for a model. At first Rafaela is a substitute for a similarly shaped model, a commission who has left town. But De Lempicka moves on to Rafaela as a subject and the work knocks the socks off art patrons.
The story, told mostly from Rafaela’s perspective, is gripping-ish. Lots of lounging and grape eating, followed by messing up the sheets. After spending sexual energy as almost a job or a way of staying afloat, Rafaela finds someone she enjoys screwing and falls hard for the artist, 10 years her senior. Unfortunately, artists. De Lempicka might be walking the walk of love, but she is looking out for numero uno and pitting patron versus patron, with Rafaela as a pawn. Unfortunately, the last fourth of the book shifts voices in a way that feels like staying a bit too long at the party. The now aged artist considers her past and has her say on what it all meant.
What worked in Woody Allen’s movie “Midnight in Paris” -- monologues by Hemingway, glimpses of Salvidor Dali -- comes across as hokey and distracting. Rafaela’s new found friend, and eventual savior, is a character named Anson. He’s a sportswriter turned go-fer for a private investigator. He is shades of Hemingway. He is dissing F. Scott Fitzgerald and fending off Rafaela’s advances with a vague medical situation caused in the war. A wife and a girlfriend. It’s all kind of blerg. Paula McLain did it better with her account of Hadley Richardson in the novel “The Paris Wife.”
On the other hand, “The Last Nude” is a good way to dig into the work of De Lempicka and inspires the same artistic curiosity as Steve Martin’s novel “An Object of Beauty.” That alone makes this a worthwhile read.
With “The Last Nude,” Ellis Avery considers the subject of 1920s art deco artist Tamara De Lempicka’s six-painting Rafaela series. The art deco portraits star a heavy-lidded woman with soft rounds of flesh, all red scarves and lipsticks and shading. She was one of many women De Lempicka painted and, of course, with whom the artist got all deep sighs and panty. The novel is about their blip of a relationship set in the edgy, ex-pat heavy, Jazz Era in Paris and features cameos from some the eras major players including Violette Morris, a female boxer turned Nazi informer, and Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare & Company, publishers of “Ulysses.”
Rafaela is an American girl who is en route to Italy for an arranged marriage when she jumps ship with a creeper to forge a life for herself in Paris instead. She is intrigued by a Coco Chanel dress she saw once and resorts to doling out sexual favors in exchange for a new life. She goes a bit wild-child, dancing on tables and diddling married men with her roommate Gin. De Lempicka finds the girl in a seedy prostitute hangout. Rafaela is looking for a friend; De Lempicka is looking for a model. At first Rafaela is a substitute for a similarly shaped model, a commission who has left town. But De Lempicka moves on to Rafaela as a subject and the work knocks the socks off art patrons.
The story, told mostly from Rafaela’s perspective, is gripping-ish. Lots of lounging and grape eating, followed by messing up the sheets. After spending sexual energy as almost a job or a way of staying afloat, Rafaela finds someone she enjoys screwing and falls hard for the artist, 10 years her senior. Unfortunately, artists. De Lempicka might be walking the walk of love, but she is looking out for numero uno and pitting patron versus patron, with Rafaela as a pawn. Unfortunately, the last fourth of the book shifts voices in a way that feels like staying a bit too long at the party. The now aged artist considers her past and has her say on what it all meant.
What worked in Woody Allen’s movie “Midnight in Paris” -- monologues by Hemingway, glimpses of Salvidor Dali -- comes across as hokey and distracting. Rafaela’s new found friend, and eventual savior, is a character named Anson. He’s a sportswriter turned go-fer for a private investigator. He is shades of Hemingway. He is dissing F. Scott Fitzgerald and fending off Rafaela’s advances with a vague medical situation caused in the war. A wife and a girlfriend. It’s all kind of blerg. Paula McLain did it better with her account of Hadley Richardson in the novel “The Paris Wife.”
On the other hand, “The Last Nude” is a good way to dig into the work of De Lempicka and inspires the same artistic curiosity as Steve Martin’s novel “An Object of Beauty.” That alone makes this a worthwhile read.
April 25, 2017
I've read many artistic historical fiction novels, but this is the first I've read from a female artist perspective. And it's an artist with whom I am not at all familiar.
I was set on giving this book a 3.5-4 stars and then Part 2 hit. I hated Part 2 audio version. It may have physically read better. Also I didn't have any notes to tell me how much of the plot was based upon fact.
I was set on giving this book a 3.5-4 stars and then Part 2 hit. I hated Part 2 audio version. It may have physically read better. Also I didn't have any notes to tell me how much of the plot was based upon fact.
January 30, 2012
I gave myself a personal challenge this year and that was to read a new release each month. This was my first read in the challenge.
I didn't know anything about the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka before reading this book. One of the things I like about historical fiction is that it gives me the opportunity to learn about historical people and events.
This book tells the story of the relationship between Tamara de Lempinski and her model, Rafaela Fano. The first part of the book is narrated by Rafaela. It was slow to start but just as I was about to put it aside, the pace picked up. I enjoyed Rafaela though I didn't think that character development in this book was strong.
The last part of the book was narrated by Tamara. The pace dragged down again and I realized that I didn't care enough about this woman to enjoy the final chapters. She did not seem to be a likeable woman.
The thing I liked the most about this book is that it inspired me to go online and look at her art. I not well versed in art, but I know what I like. I like many of her paintings. So, in that respect, my life has been enriched by this book.
I didn't know anything about the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka before reading this book. One of the things I like about historical fiction is that it gives me the opportunity to learn about historical people and events.
This book tells the story of the relationship between Tamara de Lempinski and her model, Rafaela Fano. The first part of the book is narrated by Rafaela. It was slow to start but just as I was about to put it aside, the pace picked up. I enjoyed Rafaela though I didn't think that character development in this book was strong.
The last part of the book was narrated by Tamara. The pace dragged down again and I realized that I didn't care enough about this woman to enjoy the final chapters. She did not seem to be a likeable woman.
The thing I liked the most about this book is that it inspired me to go online and look at her art. I not well versed in art, but I know what I like. I like many of her paintings. So, in that respect, my life has been enriched by this book.
December 14, 2011
I received an advance copy of this novel from the Amazon VINE Program for which I am a reviewer. The writing style of Ellis Avery is glorious beyond belief. It's as if a truly gifted writer sought and succeeded in conveying in the brush strokes of her words the experience of the master portrait painter with her canvas. The brush strokes of the syntax are inspired and lucious and rich with well-mixed colors. The intriguing storyline is masterfully crafted with a magnificent interplay of light and darkness in the texture of the tale. It is elegantly sensual, smoldering, and yet most tastefully rendered. Major players of the Lost Generation in Paris appear or are named: Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare & Company, Cocteau, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein. Avery animates Sylvia Beach and brings her to life remarkably but much less so these charcoal sketches of famous artists and writers, which I had hoped she would render with more depth and daring. Rafaela is a young model and the central story line concerns the relationship between the model and her painter, Tamara de Lempicka. The main and lesser known characters literally and figuratively are roundly drawn with fascinating idiosyncracy. The connection between model and painter is portrayed realistically and the effect is powerful of their love affair and treacherous business relationship just as Paris was about to be torn apart by global strife. The writing is exquisitely crafted and every sentence is a beauty, a microcosm of the bigger picture -- a world in every word. As someone who reads literary novels avidly, and also writes them, I know a great book when I read one and this is a major work with a timeless quality which is both dreamy in the composition and vividly real with a clarity and craftsmanship uncommonly rare. Avery can defintely write and her commanding novel should prove to be one for the ages about a time before the war when art boldly sought to assert its humanity with new expression leaving the art and artists immortal. For as painful as true art proves to be as a harsh mistress, true art endures. If you are a serious reader of literary novels, then Avery's brilliant portrait work and moving, layered, story line will leave you breathless: this is a brilliant novel beckoning exotically to be read. Give in to the impulse and indulge youself in a great read.
May 1, 2012
Paris in the 1920s was a glittering refuge for expatriate artists, hedonists, the sexually unconventional, exiles and runaways of all sorts. Its soundtrack was le jazz hot. The author of this novel, who teaches fiction-writing at Columbia University in New York, has brought this milieu back to life in words that seem as carefully chosen as a palette of colours.
The “last nude” of the title is a copy of one of the six paintings of “beautiful Rafaela” made in the 1920s by an actual painter, Tamara de Lempicka. In this novel, seventeen-year-old Rafaela is Tamara’s model, her muse, and the primary narrator of their story. Their affair is redeeming and inspirational for both, even though it is characterized by dishonesty and betrayal.
Rafaela recounts her short history without self-pity: the child of a scandalous marriage between a Catholic mother and a Jewish father who eloped from Italy to New York in the early twentieth century, Rafaela becomes the outsider in her family after her father dies and her mother marries a socially prominent man in the local Italian community and gives him four sons. By the time Rafaela is sixteen, her lush beauty is distracting and disturbing to her stepfather and her mother.
To “protect” her and get her out of the way, they plan to marry her off to a relative of her stepfather in Italy. Her step-grandmother agrees to escort Rafaela to her new home. On a trans-Atlantic ship, Rafaela attracts the attention of a much older Frenchman who helps her to escape to Paris.
Alone in a strange city, Rafaela seems doomed to the dramatic but sordid life of a kept woman or (especially when desperate for cash) a casual whore. When her parents in New York learn her whereabouts, they disown her.
Rafaela meets another mistress of a married Frenchman, Gin from California, who hopes to launch a career as a singer and a dancer. The two girls are set up in an apartment together by their frugal patrons, and they become best friends.
Rafaela shows no sexual interest in women until she is picked up in the Bois de Boulogne by the charismatic Tamara, who claims to be twenty-nine. As always, Rafaela’s appearance produces a reaction in an observer that Rafaela herself can’t fathom. Without being fully aware of it, the girl is famished for love.
Tamara is brilliant, selfish and opaque. She claims to be a refugee from the Russian Revolution of 1917 with a husband who is in the process of divorcing her. “De Lepicka” seems to be a Frenchified version of a Polish name, but whether Tamara herself is Polish or Russian is open to question. Her young daughter Kizette is often left in the care of Tamara’s mother, but in Rafaela’s viewpoint, Tamara is wonderfully attentive to her daughter.
Tamara’s claims to a rightful place among the nobility serve as a warning to the reader that Tamara craves financial security and improved social status, two things she couldn’t have in an exclusive relationship with Rafaela. Yet love and hope are often impervious to common sense.
A supporting cast of secondary characters includes Sylvia Beach, the American owner of a famous bookstore which serves as an avant-garde social centre, Shakespeare and Company. She and her long-term lover Adrienne Monnier take a motherly interest in Rafaela, who sees evidence in them and their regular clientele that life outside the social mainstream doesn’t have to be degrading. Eventually, Rafaela’s talent as a seamstress enables her to survive without selling her body in any way.
Tamara has the last word in their story, yet Rafaela’s innocence in the midst of exploitation and self-promotion haunts the reader after the last page. Her beauty is shown to be more than physical.
Repeated references to Rafaela as “Juive” (Jewish) by Tamara’s admirers point to the growing antisemetism, particularly in France, that eventually resulted in the Holocaust. The elderly Tamara, reminiscing about the Second World War, expresses concern for Rafaela and a willingness to rescue her from a fate worse than poverty or prostitution, but by this point, Tamara’s credibility is open to doubt.
It is tempting to quote directly from the novel, but the review copy I read is an advance proof which could be revised before the book is released for sale. The author’s style in the advance version is already so vivid and painterly that I can only hope the last version (like the last nude) retains the freshness of the original.
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The “last nude” of the title is a copy of one of the six paintings of “beautiful Rafaela” made in the 1920s by an actual painter, Tamara de Lempicka. In this novel, seventeen-year-old Rafaela is Tamara’s model, her muse, and the primary narrator of their story. Their affair is redeeming and inspirational for both, even though it is characterized by dishonesty and betrayal.
Rafaela recounts her short history without self-pity: the child of a scandalous marriage between a Catholic mother and a Jewish father who eloped from Italy to New York in the early twentieth century, Rafaela becomes the outsider in her family after her father dies and her mother marries a socially prominent man in the local Italian community and gives him four sons. By the time Rafaela is sixteen, her lush beauty is distracting and disturbing to her stepfather and her mother.
To “protect” her and get her out of the way, they plan to marry her off to a relative of her stepfather in Italy. Her step-grandmother agrees to escort Rafaela to her new home. On a trans-Atlantic ship, Rafaela attracts the attention of a much older Frenchman who helps her to escape to Paris.
Alone in a strange city, Rafaela seems doomed to the dramatic but sordid life of a kept woman or (especially when desperate for cash) a casual whore. When her parents in New York learn her whereabouts, they disown her.
Rafaela meets another mistress of a married Frenchman, Gin from California, who hopes to launch a career as a singer and a dancer. The two girls are set up in an apartment together by their frugal patrons, and they become best friends.
Rafaela shows no sexual interest in women until she is picked up in the Bois de Boulogne by the charismatic Tamara, who claims to be twenty-nine. As always, Rafaela’s appearance produces a reaction in an observer that Rafaela herself can’t fathom. Without being fully aware of it, the girl is famished for love.
Tamara is brilliant, selfish and opaque. She claims to be a refugee from the Russian Revolution of 1917 with a husband who is in the process of divorcing her. “De Lepicka” seems to be a Frenchified version of a Polish name, but whether Tamara herself is Polish or Russian is open to question. Her young daughter Kizette is often left in the care of Tamara’s mother, but in Rafaela’s viewpoint, Tamara is wonderfully attentive to her daughter.
Tamara’s claims to a rightful place among the nobility serve as a warning to the reader that Tamara craves financial security and improved social status, two things she couldn’t have in an exclusive relationship with Rafaela. Yet love and hope are often impervious to common sense.
A supporting cast of secondary characters includes Sylvia Beach, the American owner of a famous bookstore which serves as an avant-garde social centre, Shakespeare and Company. She and her long-term lover Adrienne Monnier take a motherly interest in Rafaela, who sees evidence in them and their regular clientele that life outside the social mainstream doesn’t have to be degrading. Eventually, Rafaela’s talent as a seamstress enables her to survive without selling her body in any way.
Tamara has the last word in their story, yet Rafaela’s innocence in the midst of exploitation and self-promotion haunts the reader after the last page. Her beauty is shown to be more than physical.
Repeated references to Rafaela as “Juive” (Jewish) by Tamara’s admirers point to the growing antisemetism, particularly in France, that eventually resulted in the Holocaust. The elderly Tamara, reminiscing about the Second World War, expresses concern for Rafaela and a willingness to rescue her from a fate worse than poverty or prostitution, but by this point, Tamara’s credibility is open to doubt.
It is tempting to quote directly from the novel, but the review copy I read is an advance proof which could be revised before the book is released for sale. The author’s style in the advance version is already so vivid and painterly that I can only hope the last version (like the last nude) retains the freshness of the original.
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July 23, 2012
I don't know...I just didn't like it all that much. I paint myself, and really I just copy stuff that I like and I'm pretty good at it. I've done several Lempika's, Saint Morritz, and Spring, another one or two. I love Lempika's work, I just don't like her. I read the biography Kizette wrote about her years ago, so I already knew a fair amount about her. It's hard to know what's real and what's not in this book. I would be interested in knowing about Raphaela, but I'd like to know what's real and what isn't. I'm not saying the author did a poor job of writing the book, it read easily enough. I have the same problem with this book that I had with Katherine Govier's book Creation about the artist Audubon, which is well written and fascinating, but in both books, I really didn't like the central real person characters, who I had formerly been in awe of...who is self centered, and doesn't care who or what they take down with them in thier pursuit of pleasure and furthering themselves. The book did make me want to know more about Sylvia Beach and some of the other periferal actual people in the book. I also think that Lempika was one of those people who did her best work when she was young, and she was put in a position, I think, where if she didn't change her style with the times, people would have dissed her for that, but her style is what made her, and he later work, just didn't hold up at all, and some of it was just plain terrible.
September 6, 2016
A fascinating book about an intriguing premise – the love affair between Tamara de Lempicka and her model. Tamara de Lempicka was a painter most famous in the twenties where her severe, cubist work caught the imagination of the French with its Art Deco allure. Lempicka painted a mysterious woman named Rafaela and the back story that the writer invents for this muse is interesting, but lacks plausibility. Rafaela is a girl from New York City being sent to Italy for an arranged marriage. She makes it to France and makes a meager living as a “girlfriend” of rich men, but it seems unlikely in that time and being brought up in a sheltered environment, that she would have thrived.
That being said, the language used by the author is wonderful and enchanting. The plotting was well done and I enjoyed the story. The subplot of Rafaela and Anson was interesting and it was funny when he later discovers how young Rafaela actually is. If you enjoy historical fiction, then you will find this is a lush, beautiful glimpse of jazz age France.
That being said, the language used by the author is wonderful and enchanting. The plotting was well done and I enjoyed the story. The subplot of Rafaela and Anson was interesting and it was funny when he later discovers how young Rafaela actually is. If you enjoy historical fiction, then you will find this is a lush, beautiful glimpse of jazz age France.
September 20, 2013
OK, so clearly I'm in the minority here, but is all historical fiction this clumsy? The writing was okay, but the dialog was so obviously not of the era as to be distracting. There isn't the smallest ort of subtlety in how ex-pat notables and various historic references are incorporated into the story. "OH LOOK, there goes JEAN COCTEAU. Hand me some absinthe! You guys, the ZIPPER was just invented! Something something something abortion." And excepting one scene near the beginning, it doesn't even have the sustained sexiness to be decent erotica. I'd rather be reading Anais Nin or Djuna Barnes.
August 27, 2016
I confess that prior to this novel, I had not heard of the Polish art deco artist, Tamta de Lempicka. I do know about and enjoy details of the Lost Generation (“Midnight in Paris” acquainted many people with some of these characters) in Paris. Avery’s novel tells some of the painter’s story, letting us meet Tamara through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Rafaela Fano, who became muse and model for de Lempicka.
I went back and forth between de Lempicka’s paintings online and the book that imagined how each painting might have come about. Rafaela is an engaging character, young and naïve enough that I kept wanting to shout, “Don’t do it!” when she made one bad decision after another. Rafaela’s point of view in the first section was for me more compelling than the second section written from Tamara’s point of view. All in all, though, I enjoyed Avery’s sensuous writing and depiction of a well-known time and place with a different set of characters (artists instead of writers) and their possible lives.
I went back and forth between de Lempicka’s paintings online and the book that imagined how each painting might have come about. Rafaela is an engaging character, young and naïve enough that I kept wanting to shout, “Don’t do it!” when she made one bad decision after another. Rafaela’s point of view in the first section was for me more compelling than the second section written from Tamara’s point of view. All in all, though, I enjoyed Avery’s sensuous writing and depiction of a well-known time and place with a different set of characters (artists instead of writers) and their possible lives.
June 29, 2012
How wonderful to find a historical novel with a main bi character who is not the villain of the piece, but rather one of its moral centers. In *The Last Nude,*" Ellis Avery recreates the lives of Tamara de Lempicka, a Polish painter in 1920s Paris, and her model and lover Rafaela Fano. She also takes us on a tour of the female queer demimonde of the place and time, with cameos by famous literary and art world figures. Erotic as well as imaginative, this book made me put Avery's other two books, *The Smoke Week: September 11-21, 2001* and *The Teahouse Fire" on my "to-read" list.
January 27, 2016
This did start out good but it wasn't that interesting to me and the characters fell flat in my opinion. It was a little bit too much romance novel for my taste. I am moving on to something else. I just can't seem to get into this one. I can't win them all. This one just isn't for me. Did not finish. One star = nope, didn't like it. Back to the library with this one.
December 12, 2012
I picked up Ellis Avery’s latest novel The Last Nude after reading Danika’s glowing review of it on the lesbrary earlier this year. It’s not every author who can claim your lifelong allegiance after you’ve read only one of her works, but I agree with Danika that Avery is one of these writers and that reading The Last Nude is enough to convince you. This historical novel, set in Paris in the decadent 1920s period between the two world wars, is an easy book to love and sink into. From the first unassuming sentence (“I only met Tamara de Lempicka because I needed a hundred francs”), The Last Nude is captivating and delightful. The writing is exquisite; the characterization rich; and the setting wonderfully and lovingly rendered in superb detail.
Just because the novel is beautiful, though, doesn’t mean it isn’t also without its delicious complexities. We are introduced to the whirlwind environment of 20s Paris, in all its queer, smoky glory through the eyes of Rafaela Fano, an Italian-American Jew who is also experiencing it for the first time. Rafaela (her actual last name isn’t known) is a real historical person about whom we don’t know much except she was Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka’s model and inspiration for some of her most arresting works, including La Belle Rafaela, which graces the cover of the novel. Rafaela is both sweetly naïve and street-wise, having survived her family’s attempt to arrange her marriage at age sixteen by trading sex for passage to Paris. She’s survived in the city thus far by doing sex work, sometimes in more explicit scenarios than others; Rafaela is on the brink of a so-called respectable job at a department store when Tamara, seduced by her beauty on the street, recruits the young woman to model for her.
Tamara, as you might have guessed, is unbelievably sexy and glamorous; of course, she’s also a supremely talented artist with an insatiable appetite for art, wealth, and power. Rafaela falls for Tamara, hard. You know from early on, despite the fact that the story is related to us through Rafaela’s perspective, that Tamara’s motives are more complicated and less wholesome than Rafaela’s young, innocent heart wants to believe. In fact, it’s not just Tamara, it’s the whole circle Rafaela is introduced to: we enter the exotic world of the queer, artsy, bohemian population and are by turns charmed and appalled by them just as Rafaela is. Like us 21st century readers, Rafaela is a stranger to this world, its hopeful possibilities, and its hidden sinister underbelly.
Despite the sense of apprehension you feel knowing that Tamara and Rafaela’s love affair is doomed, Tamara offers something to Rafaela that is priceless: she gives Rafaela her own body back and opens up her sexuality. After the first time they make love, Rafaela recalls:
“And suddenly I remembered a day when I was very small, before my brothers came along. When my mother went out for groceries, I slopped … oil on the banister and slid down. I climbed those stairs again and again, to get that feeling: how slick my knickers got, how distinctly I could feel the spreading wings of my little figa, how the shock of bliss pleated through me like lightning. I had forgotten this kind of eagerness until now, as my body sobbed into Tamara’s hand. Again, again! I wanted to crow. I was a giddy witch on a broomstick. I was a leaping dog. I was liquor; I was laughter; I was a sliding girl on a shining rail: something I’d forgotten how to be.”
Later on, Rafaela tells us how she has learned to love and revel in her body:
“Ever since my sixteenth birthday, my body had felt like a coin in an unfamiliar currency: small, shiny, and heavy, obviously of value to somebody, but not to me… My body felt coincidental to me—I could just as easily be a tree, a stone, a gust of wind. For so long, I still felt like the ten-year-old me, skinny as a last wafer of soap, needling through Washington Square on her way to Baxter Street. But my months with Tamara had worn away the lonely old questions and replaced them with a greed of my own: my body was just a fact, this night, a kind of euphoria. I coincided with it, and with the dancing crowd. Throbbing with the horns and drums, we formed a waterfall passing over a light, each of us a drop, a spark, bright, gone. The music danced us, and I knew it wouldn’t last, this body I’d learnt to love.”
If you’re at all familiar with famous lesbian/queer/bi expatriate women from this period, you’ll be delighted to see the literary couple Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, who ran successful bookstores and first published James Joyce’s Ulysses, function as Rafaela’s queer elders. Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas make appearances too, as well as Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney, and Violette Morris. If you don’t know who any of these women are, I suggest looking them up asap. Ah, if only I could time travel back to one of their parties and chat with them, wearing smoky black eye shadow and red lipstick, and smoking cigarettes out of a long classy holder without knowing the consequences.
The consequences of the way Tamara treats Rafaela don’t fully emerge until the second part of the book, much smaller than the first, and from the perspective of Tamara as an old woman. On the one hand, I felt robbed of the chance to see in her own words how Rafaela pulls herself up after Tamara’s betrayal and ‘follows her dreams.’ On the other, Avery had to do something to humanize Tamara for us, if only to complicate the view of her as a ruthless egotistical villain. Although I can’t say I was completely satisfied with Tamara’s atonement, I was glad in the end to know that Tamara did care for Rafaela, amidst her self-delusions and guilt. In a way, these revelations made the love story all the more tragic; they also made the novel even more complex, powerful, and poignant than it already was. This, considering The Last Nude is (lesbian) historical fiction at its finest, is quite an achievement.
Just because the novel is beautiful, though, doesn’t mean it isn’t also without its delicious complexities. We are introduced to the whirlwind environment of 20s Paris, in all its queer, smoky glory through the eyes of Rafaela Fano, an Italian-American Jew who is also experiencing it for the first time. Rafaela (her actual last name isn’t known) is a real historical person about whom we don’t know much except she was Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka’s model and inspiration for some of her most arresting works, including La Belle Rafaela, which graces the cover of the novel. Rafaela is both sweetly naïve and street-wise, having survived her family’s attempt to arrange her marriage at age sixteen by trading sex for passage to Paris. She’s survived in the city thus far by doing sex work, sometimes in more explicit scenarios than others; Rafaela is on the brink of a so-called respectable job at a department store when Tamara, seduced by her beauty on the street, recruits the young woman to model for her.
Tamara, as you might have guessed, is unbelievably sexy and glamorous; of course, she’s also a supremely talented artist with an insatiable appetite for art, wealth, and power. Rafaela falls for Tamara, hard. You know from early on, despite the fact that the story is related to us through Rafaela’s perspective, that Tamara’s motives are more complicated and less wholesome than Rafaela’s young, innocent heart wants to believe. In fact, it’s not just Tamara, it’s the whole circle Rafaela is introduced to: we enter the exotic world of the queer, artsy, bohemian population and are by turns charmed and appalled by them just as Rafaela is. Like us 21st century readers, Rafaela is a stranger to this world, its hopeful possibilities, and its hidden sinister underbelly.
Despite the sense of apprehension you feel knowing that Tamara and Rafaela’s love affair is doomed, Tamara offers something to Rafaela that is priceless: she gives Rafaela her own body back and opens up her sexuality. After the first time they make love, Rafaela recalls:
“And suddenly I remembered a day when I was very small, before my brothers came along. When my mother went out for groceries, I slopped … oil on the banister and slid down. I climbed those stairs again and again, to get that feeling: how slick my knickers got, how distinctly I could feel the spreading wings of my little figa, how the shock of bliss pleated through me like lightning. I had forgotten this kind of eagerness until now, as my body sobbed into Tamara’s hand. Again, again! I wanted to crow. I was a giddy witch on a broomstick. I was a leaping dog. I was liquor; I was laughter; I was a sliding girl on a shining rail: something I’d forgotten how to be.”
Later on, Rafaela tells us how she has learned to love and revel in her body:
“Ever since my sixteenth birthday, my body had felt like a coin in an unfamiliar currency: small, shiny, and heavy, obviously of value to somebody, but not to me… My body felt coincidental to me—I could just as easily be a tree, a stone, a gust of wind. For so long, I still felt like the ten-year-old me, skinny as a last wafer of soap, needling through Washington Square on her way to Baxter Street. But my months with Tamara had worn away the lonely old questions and replaced them with a greed of my own: my body was just a fact, this night, a kind of euphoria. I coincided with it, and with the dancing crowd. Throbbing with the horns and drums, we formed a waterfall passing over a light, each of us a drop, a spark, bright, gone. The music danced us, and I knew it wouldn’t last, this body I’d learnt to love.”
If you’re at all familiar with famous lesbian/queer/bi expatriate women from this period, you’ll be delighted to see the literary couple Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, who ran successful bookstores and first published James Joyce’s Ulysses, function as Rafaela’s queer elders. Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas make appearances too, as well as Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney, and Violette Morris. If you don’t know who any of these women are, I suggest looking them up asap. Ah, if only I could time travel back to one of their parties and chat with them, wearing smoky black eye shadow and red lipstick, and smoking cigarettes out of a long classy holder without knowing the consequences.
The consequences of the way Tamara treats Rafaela don’t fully emerge until the second part of the book, much smaller than the first, and from the perspective of Tamara as an old woman. On the one hand, I felt robbed of the chance to see in her own words how Rafaela pulls herself up after Tamara’s betrayal and ‘follows her dreams.’ On the other, Avery had to do something to humanize Tamara for us, if only to complicate the view of her as a ruthless egotistical villain. Although I can’t say I was completely satisfied with Tamara’s atonement, I was glad in the end to know that Tamara did care for Rafaela, amidst her self-delusions and guilt. In a way, these revelations made the love story all the more tragic; they also made the novel even more complex, powerful, and poignant than it already was. This, considering The Last Nude is (lesbian) historical fiction at its finest, is quite an achievement.
June 28, 2021
Ultimul nud este o odă închinată feminității, pasiunii, neconvenționalului și senzualității, în care femeia este ridicată la rang de artă, iar trupul acesteia este analizat până la cele mai mici detalii. Este un roman îndrăzneț, care ne poartă pașii prin Parisul boem de imediat după Primul Război Mondial, care, la acel moment, era considerat încă a fi Marele Război, fără putința de a mai exista altceva după el. Este povestea unei mari pasiuni trăite în preajma inspirației artistice și a idolatrizării fructului oprit. E clar un roman feminist, în care femeia este ridicată la rang de artă, iar bărbatul este portretizat într-un mod atât de urât, de încărcat de misoginism, obsesie sexuală, cu fetișuri care mai de care mai odioase, care face ca singurele relații amoroase posibile să fie cele dintre două reprezentante ale sexului frumos. Iubirea izvorăște cu patimă între două femei, iar acest tip de relație este văzut ca fiind unica modalitate de salvare într-o societate ce pune accent pe tradițional, în ciuda exhibiționismului de care dă dovadă prin prostituția mascată și consumul de substanțe interzise.
Romanul lui Ellis Avery ne transpune într-un Paris al anului 1927, într-o perioadă dedicată celei mai prolifice forme de artă modernă, Art Deco, în care aristocrații se pierd printre opere de artă, iar artiștii încearcă să găsească cele mai bune forme de supraviețuire. Este un moment fascinant din istorie, în care erosul, senzualitatea și pasiunea devin oarecum clandestine, iar trădarea este văzută ca un mijloc de supraviețuire.
Pe acest fundal își construiește autoarea povestea dintre celebra pictoriță, Tamara de Lempicka, și muza sa, Rafaela Fano, izvorâtă dintr-o dragoste a sa față de picturile artistei controversate. Istoria lor te transpune direct acolo, într-o lume nebună, în care bărbații abordează femeile la restaurant, oferindu-le mijloace de trai altfel extrem de inaccesibile. Este o formă de prostituție mascată, pe care autoarea ne-o înfățișează ușor voalat, prin intermediul unui stil de un lirism pur, lăsându-ne să percepem doar printre rânduri durerea tinerelor fete, supuse celor mai extravagante dorințe masculine doar pentru a putea duce o viață cât de cât decentă. Dincolo de această boemie, se află mizeria, boala și nesiguranța pentru ziua de mâine.
https://crampeiedesufletblog.wordpres...
Romanul lui Ellis Avery ne transpune într-un Paris al anului 1927, într-o perioadă dedicată celei mai prolifice forme de artă modernă, Art Deco, în care aristocrații se pierd printre opere de artă, iar artiștii încearcă să găsească cele mai bune forme de supraviețuire. Este un moment fascinant din istorie, în care erosul, senzualitatea și pasiunea devin oarecum clandestine, iar trădarea este văzută ca un mijloc de supraviețuire.
Pe acest fundal își construiește autoarea povestea dintre celebra pictoriță, Tamara de Lempicka, și muza sa, Rafaela Fano, izvorâtă dintr-o dragoste a sa față de picturile artistei controversate. Istoria lor te transpune direct acolo, într-o lume nebună, în care bărbații abordează femeile la restaurant, oferindu-le mijloace de trai altfel extrem de inaccesibile. Este o formă de prostituție mascată, pe care autoarea ne-o înfățișează ușor voalat, prin intermediul unui stil de un lirism pur, lăsându-ne să percepem doar printre rânduri durerea tinerelor fete, supuse celor mai extravagante dorințe masculine doar pentru a putea duce o viață cât de cât decentă. Dincolo de această boemie, se află mizeria, boala și nesiguranța pentru ziua de mâine.
https://crampeiedesufletblog.wordpres...
April 11, 2025
3.9!!! But giving it a 3 bc that feels in the spirit of Tamara, atleast pictured here. Channeling being a hard ass. Not rounding up!
Well worn copy gifted by a discerning lovely impeccably clothed friend. Devoured it. The subject matter is perfect for me: an artist whose paintings I’ve seen and dreamed of stepping inside, sapphic appreciation of glamour, gay trysts, yearning, tensions of loyalty to self and striving for higher purpose, possession of beauty, Jewishness!
I like the writers voice a lot, precise writing but feels so lush, matches so well with the unabashed “I notice everything” sapphic content. Faithful and loving and thoughtful descriptions of the real paintings. appreciate the shift in perspective we get in the end!
Well worn copy gifted by a discerning lovely impeccably clothed friend. Devoured it. The subject matter is perfect for me: an artist whose paintings I’ve seen and dreamed of stepping inside, sapphic appreciation of glamour, gay trysts, yearning, tensions of loyalty to self and striving for higher purpose, possession of beauty, Jewishness!
I like the writers voice a lot, precise writing but feels so lush, matches so well with the unabashed “I notice everything” sapphic content. Faithful and loving and thoughtful descriptions of the real paintings. appreciate the shift in perspective we get in the end!
May 7, 2023
czuje giga niedosyt ale bylo okej, takie 3,5⭐️
April 21, 2014
I’ll never look at a painting of a person, especially a nude, in the same way again—or rather, I’ll look at a painting more fully. Who is that model? If she was the wife or lover of the painter, was she happy? Was she forced into that position? Both physically and metaphorically.
We think of the models as providing mere content for the painting. Look at how the fabric folds, or how the shadows play across the nude form. It’s not a form, it’s a human being, with a life and aspirations and heartache all her own. If her gaze is averted, why? Was she told to, or could she not bear to gaze upon the person examining her so closely, staring at her for hours, with what intention?
I profess to not liking fictional books about real people, but this is the second one I’ve read and it’s a story that will stay with me a long time. I’ll try not to take it literally, since almost nothing is known about the real Rafaela. It’s a “what if” story. It could have happened this way, but maybe not. So accept it as fiction but enjoy the truths within.
The writing is beautiful, the Paris of the 1920s, between wars, parallels the lives of these two women, each caught between her own wars—Rafaela between life as a prostitute and a life being loved. Tamara is a wildly successful painter yet living on the edge without a patron. Even if they could live as a couple, and many women did in Paris at the time, Rafaela cannot make Tamara a baroness.
The paintings are central to the story, so Google them as you read. The one on the cover is important, but it’s not the key painting. I find it hard to read words about a visual art (or music for that matter), and because this reads much like an autobiography, it helps to see what they are talking about, who Tamara is painting.
I didn’t understand everything that was said, the fine nuances of their conversations, many with French words sprinkled in that were not clear from the context. There are several real people in the cast, but one character seems to be Hemingway—he tells the tale of his wife losing his stories on a train—but clearly is not. I’m not sure if Avery did this with other characters, or why with this one. I wouldn’t even know that but for having read The Paris Wife, another novel about real people. Funny to read two stories of fictionalized real people involving the same fictionalized real people.
Rafaela tells her story 16 years after meeting Tamara. Why then? We don’t really learn (or if it’s there, I missed it). The end of the book switches point of view, which made for an interesting flip—much of what has happened now has a different interpretation. Absolutely heartbreaking and beautifully written.
Rafaela was only 17 when she met Tamara. They were together a short time. Would Tamara have had such a profound impact on her, over the course of a long life? Possibly? Since we don’t know Rafaela’s real story, any motivations or consequences are speculation. But that she seemed to remain in Tamara thoughts many years later is telling. If even that is true. That’s the problem with novels about real people. I always fear I’ll believe something is true and make an ass of myself at a cocktail party.
There are many layers to this story. There’s the very personal story of these two women—how much is real, what really happened? Then there’s the overarching story of an artist and her muse and what is that relationship, exactly?
We think of the models as providing mere content for the painting. Look at how the fabric folds, or how the shadows play across the nude form. It’s not a form, it’s a human being, with a life and aspirations and heartache all her own. If her gaze is averted, why? Was she told to, or could she not bear to gaze upon the person examining her so closely, staring at her for hours, with what intention?
I profess to not liking fictional books about real people, but this is the second one I’ve read and it’s a story that will stay with me a long time. I’ll try not to take it literally, since almost nothing is known about the real Rafaela. It’s a “what if” story. It could have happened this way, but maybe not. So accept it as fiction but enjoy the truths within.
The writing is beautiful, the Paris of the 1920s, between wars, parallels the lives of these two women, each caught between her own wars—Rafaela between life as a prostitute and a life being loved. Tamara is a wildly successful painter yet living on the edge without a patron. Even if they could live as a couple, and many women did in Paris at the time, Rafaela cannot make Tamara a baroness.
The paintings are central to the story, so Google them as you read. The one on the cover is important, but it’s not the key painting. I find it hard to read words about a visual art (or music for that matter), and because this reads much like an autobiography, it helps to see what they are talking about, who Tamara is painting.
I didn’t understand everything that was said, the fine nuances of their conversations, many with French words sprinkled in that were not clear from the context. There are several real people in the cast, but one character seems to be Hemingway—he tells the tale of his wife losing his stories on a train—but clearly is not. I’m not sure if Avery did this with other characters, or why with this one. I wouldn’t even know that but for having read The Paris Wife, another novel about real people. Funny to read two stories of fictionalized real people involving the same fictionalized real people.
Rafaela tells her story 16 years after meeting Tamara. Why then? We don’t really learn (or if it’s there, I missed it). The end of the book switches point of view, which made for an interesting flip—much of what has happened now has a different interpretation. Absolutely heartbreaking and beautifully written.
Rafaela was only 17 when she met Tamara. They were together a short time. Would Tamara have had such a profound impact on her, over the course of a long life? Possibly? Since we don’t know Rafaela’s real story, any motivations or consequences are speculation. But that she seemed to remain in Tamara thoughts many years later is telling. If even that is true. That’s the problem with novels about real people. I always fear I’ll believe something is true and make an ass of myself at a cocktail party.
There are many layers to this story. There’s the very personal story of these two women—how much is real, what really happened? Then there’s the overarching story of an artist and her muse and what is that relationship, exactly?
November 27, 2011
When I think of Tamara de Lempicka’s paintings (“Portrait of Ira P, 1930” or “Self Portrait in Green Bugatti”), I’m mindful of the similar sheen of cloth and metal. The catchlight in pupils gleams a little too hard to be warm—or altogether human. And “La Belle Rafaela, 1927,” the image that figures so significantly in Ellis Avery’s The Last Nude seems a portrait of an alien, nippless being, illumed by internal incandescence that might be translated as emotion.
In Avery’s fiction, the model—and narrator for the first 250 pages—is fond of fashion, abrim with ardor. Though intensely sexual, she’s still an ingénue.
When de Lempicka takes over narration for the last 50 plus pages, I’m reminded somewhat of Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, in which the telling shifts from one lover to the other, revealing how radically the subjective lens can distort perspective.
Of course, Avery does not give de Lempicka equal time, despite the fact that most readers may lift this novel to see how a novelist might fictionalize a famous historical person. A wise decision. Not only does the relative anonymity of the model allow Avery more room for improvisation, it also enables the author to introduce the artist’s eroticized surfaces via a sympathetic viewpoint.
De Lempicka (like another famously unconventional artiste, Marguerite Duras) turns out not to have been a really nice person. Avery’s closing chapters certainly accord with biographical reports of de Lempicka’s narcissistic personality in later years. Reading such lives, one wonders if it would have been possible for a woman (in the 1920's and 1930's)to defy conventions with such extravagance in youth if she weren’t self-absorbed and semi-sociopathic.
At any rate, I found Avery’s novel to be my favorite among the books I’ve been awarded, thus far, through First Reads giveaways. Mostly I loved the painterly strokes of Avery’s prose style. One example: “I felt like a gardenia blossom as I drifted home, fragrant and bruisable” (51).
In Avery’s fiction, the model—and narrator for the first 250 pages—is fond of fashion, abrim with ardor. Though intensely sexual, she’s still an ingénue.
When de Lempicka takes over narration for the last 50 plus pages, I’m reminded somewhat of Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, in which the telling shifts from one lover to the other, revealing how radically the subjective lens can distort perspective.
Of course, Avery does not give de Lempicka equal time, despite the fact that most readers may lift this novel to see how a novelist might fictionalize a famous historical person. A wise decision. Not only does the relative anonymity of the model allow Avery more room for improvisation, it also enables the author to introduce the artist’s eroticized surfaces via a sympathetic viewpoint.
De Lempicka (like another famously unconventional artiste, Marguerite Duras) turns out not to have been a really nice person. Avery’s closing chapters certainly accord with biographical reports of de Lempicka’s narcissistic personality in later years. Reading such lives, one wonders if it would have been possible for a woman (in the 1920's and 1930's)to defy conventions with such extravagance in youth if she weren’t self-absorbed and semi-sociopathic.
At any rate, I found Avery’s novel to be my favorite among the books I’ve been awarded, thus far, through First Reads giveaways. Mostly I loved the painterly strokes of Avery’s prose style. One example: “I felt like a gardenia blossom as I drifted home, fragrant and bruisable” (51).
April 24, 2018
Me thinks, every true, genuine talent or genius as a rule happen to be total assholes, leaving the trail of used up people, crushed hopes, and scorched earth. You get too close to the sun and you'll get burned.
Historical fiction is a tricky thing to write, but author does a really great job, recreating the jubilant atmosphere of 20ies in Paris, sprinkling the story with renowned historical personalities, telling a tale of first love, innocence lost and games with no winners. Beautiful book about people creating beautiful things and playing cruel games. A moment before the storm, before historical meat grinder starts. And the aftermath.
About 3/4 of a book is written in POV of young Raphaela, and boy, do I not like young people. Like at all. Yet I fell for her naiveté, her innocence and I felt truly sad for her, because artists? Assholes, all of them.
The last quarter of a book - told in Tamara's perspective, after a long long time. LOVED IT. Such talent are like cats, really - no apologies, because they know their own worth and use others - be it objects or people, even their own children, as tools. Sociopaths, all of them. Assholes, too.
But the treasures they create are breathtaking.
La Belle Rafaela
Historical fiction is a tricky thing to write, but author does a really great job, recreating the jubilant atmosphere of 20ies in Paris, sprinkling the story with renowned historical personalities, telling a tale of first love, innocence lost and games with no winners. Beautiful book about people creating beautiful things and playing cruel games. A moment before the storm, before historical meat grinder starts. And the aftermath.
About 3/4 of a book is written in POV of young Raphaela, and boy, do I not like young people. Like at all. Yet I fell for her naiveté, her innocence and I felt truly sad for her, because artists? Assholes, all of them.
The last quarter of a book - told in Tamara's perspective, after a long long time. LOVED IT. Such talent are like cats, really - no apologies, because they know their own worth and use others - be it objects or people, even their own children, as tools. Sociopaths, all of them. Assholes, too.
But the treasures they create are breathtaking.
La Belle Rafaela
November 29, 2017
100% Guilty Pleasure
This was essentially a badly written fanfic about Tamara De Lempicka and her muse, La Belle Rafaela. It probably deserves a 1 star rating but its getting an extra star purely because it was the perfect cure for the PMS blues and I am a sucker for anything to do with De Lempicka.
This was essentially a badly written fanfic about Tamara De Lempicka and her muse, La Belle Rafaela. It probably deserves a 1 star rating but its getting an extra star purely because it was the perfect cure for the PMS blues and I am a sucker for anything to do with De Lempicka.
May 10, 2016
I wanted to enjoy this as it I liked the premise and it had some nice writing. However I didn't care much for the characters and I found myself putting it down and not in a hurry to pick it back up again.
May 21, 2025
i love books about the tortured artist, and i spent a great deal of time admiring the works by Tamara de Lempicka. they are so beautiful and i am happy that this book introduced me to them. if i ever become filthy rich i will have a room solely dedicated to collecting her paintings...i love books about cold women who string other people along because they can't deal with their own problems without taking someone else down with them. given all of this, though, this book still somehow managed to bore me until the 70% mark and for some reason the author decided to switch POVs towards the end of the book — an interesting choice...3.5/5 rounded up
March 16, 2022
"𝘞𝘦𝘭𝘭, 𝘸𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘸𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘣𝘺 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘍𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘣𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳," 𝘈𝘯𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥. "𝘚𝘰 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘴𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘰 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘦𝘳𝘢 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘷𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘦𝘳𝘢, 𝘣𝘶𝘵..."
—
I first encountered Tamara de Lempicka's art when I read The Well of Loneliness for the first time. It is one of my favourite books and the cover of my copy- while not resembling the novel's characters in any way- was completely tangled up with my love for the book, to the extent that my first thought on seeing art in that style has always been connected to Hall's novel. I didn't know much about Tamara de Lempicka, but after looking her up as the artist of the painting used on TWOL, I found out a little about the fascinating life she led, and I discovered the existence of this book and it's been on my tbr ever since. In The Last Nude, Ellis Avery imagines the relationship between the famously bisexual de Lempicka and the model who sat for some of her most famous paintings, Rafaela. The novel takes place in the Paris of the 1920s and in the heart of the literary lesbian community that had been built there, with her fictionalised Rafaela and Tamara rubbing shoulders with icons like Sylvia Beach, Natalie Barney and Gertrude Stein. It's a period of history I am really interested in so this novel was incredibly enjoyable for me. The story isn't, however, a rose-tinted star-studded wish-fulfilment fantasy, however, as Avery takes great care to depict different sides to this period depending on the amount of money you have. The relationship between the 29-year-old Tamara and the 17-year-old Rafaela is inherently unequal. Rafaela is still a child and quickly becomes dependent on Tamara for money and a sense of security and identity, whereas what is she to Tamara other than a muse? The novel excellently depicts and deconstructs a hugely toxic relationship in a way that is both sympathetic and subtle. At times I think, seeing as it is all fictional anyway, Avery could have not leaned quite so hard into "period-appropriate" (heavy use of sarcasm here) sexualisation of a 17-year-old girl, but equally, she doesn't exactly portray it as a good thing either. I don't know enough about de Lempicka to be able to comment on its accuracy, but as a piece of historical fiction, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it.
—
I first encountered Tamara de Lempicka's art when I read The Well of Loneliness for the first time. It is one of my favourite books and the cover of my copy- while not resembling the novel's characters in any way- was completely tangled up with my love for the book, to the extent that my first thought on seeing art in that style has always been connected to Hall's novel. I didn't know much about Tamara de Lempicka, but after looking her up as the artist of the painting used on TWOL, I found out a little about the fascinating life she led, and I discovered the existence of this book and it's been on my tbr ever since. In The Last Nude, Ellis Avery imagines the relationship between the famously bisexual de Lempicka and the model who sat for some of her most famous paintings, Rafaela. The novel takes place in the Paris of the 1920s and in the heart of the literary lesbian community that had been built there, with her fictionalised Rafaela and Tamara rubbing shoulders with icons like Sylvia Beach, Natalie Barney and Gertrude Stein. It's a period of history I am really interested in so this novel was incredibly enjoyable for me. The story isn't, however, a rose-tinted star-studded wish-fulfilment fantasy, however, as Avery takes great care to depict different sides to this period depending on the amount of money you have. The relationship between the 29-year-old Tamara and the 17-year-old Rafaela is inherently unequal. Rafaela is still a child and quickly becomes dependent on Tamara for money and a sense of security and identity, whereas what is she to Tamara other than a muse? The novel excellently depicts and deconstructs a hugely toxic relationship in a way that is both sympathetic and subtle. At times I think, seeing as it is all fictional anyway, Avery could have not leaned quite so hard into "period-appropriate" (heavy use of sarcasm here) sexualisation of a 17-year-old girl, but equally, she doesn't exactly portray it as a good thing either. I don't know enough about de Lempicka to be able to comment on its accuracy, but as a piece of historical fiction, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it.
March 22, 2025
The protagonist, Rafeala, is a mostly imagined character, but many of the people she interacts with are real. She is trying to get a job in a department store in 1928 Paris, and doing some escort work to make ends meet, when she meets Tarama and becomes her model for several paintings. They quickly become lovers and their relationship forms the backbone of the plot. Rafaela is barely 17 and has never been in love before, while Tamara is in her late 20s with a husband, daughter, and artistic temperament.
I enjoyed most of the book, even the mention of when Rafaela is on her period. That is a detail often left out of historical fiction, for no good reason. The last few chapters of the book are told from Tamara's perspective, which seemed unnecessary.
I enjoyed most of the book, even the mention of when Rafaela is on her period. That is a detail often left out of historical fiction, for no good reason. The last few chapters of the book are told from Tamara's perspective, which seemed unnecessary.
March 3, 2012
The Last Nude by Ellis Avery is a fascinating book about the painter Tamara de Lempicka. Taking place primarily in Paris during 1927, Tamara picks up Rafaela Fano in her car and begins to use her as a model. Prior to modeling for Tamara, 17-year-old Rafaela was prostituting herself and living hand to mouth. A very sensuous and loving relationship develops. However, it does not pan out as Rafaela would hope. Tamara has reasons to want money and prestige, things that do not come with Rafaela. Rafaela is the muse for Tamara's most famous painting, 'La Belle Rafaela'. In this novel, many famous artists are discussed - Romaine Brooks, Jean Cocteau, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, Tallulah Bankhead, James Joyce, Andre Gide, James Joyce, Sylvia Beach, and many more. Paris is bustling with artists and there is a very large homosexual population. This novel focuses on the lesbian relationships prominent at that time.
Most all of the book is written from the viewpoint of Rafaela who, at 17, has a voice that seems much too mature for her years. This aspect of the book requires an act of faith to be believed. Rafaela is madly and completely in love with Tamara. It is her wish to live with her forever. She is, herself, a talented dressmaker and has dreams of opening up a store to display her wares. She gets a start on designing with a friend of Tamara's.
There are a lot of betrayals and jealousies in the novel, along with vivid descriptions of the artistic process. Rafaela is a naive young woman but Tamara is a decade her senior with a daughter and an impending divorce under her belt. She has many plans and does not feel reciprocally about Rafaela.
The second part of the book, a very short piece, is written from Tamara's viewpoint when she is in her eighties. She discusses the relationship she had with Rafaela, what she could have done differently and how her life is now. She is dealing with old age and shaky hands so her painting is affected. However, she is having shows in Japan and the United States. She has no money worries as her husband was very wealthy and left her with a lot of money. She is verging on paranoia as she tries to decide who to leave her inheritance to and wondering who has betrayed her recently.
Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot. However, on some levels, it floundered. Without spoilers, I will say that there are often no good reasons for the things that Tamara or Rafaela do, their choices seem impulsive and the book can jump from topic to topic and read, at times, like a soap opera. I loved the historical aspect of the artistic venue in Paris. I've read the biography of Romaine Brooks by Meryl Secrest and highly recommend that. Books about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are ubiquitous. I suggest seeing Jean Cocteau's movies and reading some Joyce. That will put the reader in the mood for this very good novel.
Most all of the book is written from the viewpoint of Rafaela who, at 17, has a voice that seems much too mature for her years. This aspect of the book requires an act of faith to be believed. Rafaela is madly and completely in love with Tamara. It is her wish to live with her forever. She is, herself, a talented dressmaker and has dreams of opening up a store to display her wares. She gets a start on designing with a friend of Tamara's.
There are a lot of betrayals and jealousies in the novel, along with vivid descriptions of the artistic process. Rafaela is a naive young woman but Tamara is a decade her senior with a daughter and an impending divorce under her belt. She has many plans and does not feel reciprocally about Rafaela.
The second part of the book, a very short piece, is written from Tamara's viewpoint when she is in her eighties. She discusses the relationship she had with Rafaela, what she could have done differently and how her life is now. She is dealing with old age and shaky hands so her painting is affected. However, she is having shows in Japan and the United States. She has no money worries as her husband was very wealthy and left her with a lot of money. She is verging on paranoia as she tries to decide who to leave her inheritance to and wondering who has betrayed her recently.
Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot. However, on some levels, it floundered. Without spoilers, I will say that there are often no good reasons for the things that Tamara or Rafaela do, their choices seem impulsive and the book can jump from topic to topic and read, at times, like a soap opera. I loved the historical aspect of the artistic venue in Paris. I've read the biography of Romaine Brooks by Meryl Secrest and highly recommend that. Books about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are ubiquitous. I suggest seeing Jean Cocteau's movies and reading some Joyce. That will put the reader in the mood for this very good novel.
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