Lee and Elaine

by Ann Rower

When Ann's childhood friend Hannah Wilke dies and is buried in Green River, the famous East Hampton cemetery which contains the graves of Abstract Expessionist painters Jackson Pollack, Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Frank O'Hara, and Stuart Davis, Ann seeks out the graveyard. She becomes obsessed with the graves of women artists, mostly wives of more famous men, and she imagines that Lee and Elaine get a second chance and come back as lesbians. Such speculation is never innocent and the narrator finds that her own life is turned upside down as she falls in love with a woman student and abandons the security of her marital Soho loft. The invasive powers of fiction are brilliantly demonstrated in this wryly funny and mordant book about romance, life, death, and starting over. A diehard New Yorker, Ann Rower is the author of If You're a Girl (Native Agents) and Armed Response (Serpent's Tail) which is her celebration of the death of her uncle Leo Robin, who wrote "Thanks for the Memory" and "Diamonds are A Girl's Best Friend" and many other songs. She is currently living in Bisbee, Arizona and thinking of teaching a course on "Writing on Horseback" at the local college. Also Available by Ann Rower Armed Response TP $12.99, 1-85242-415-X • CUSA

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

224 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2002

Reviews

[Abbie Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up on a whim on a visit to our favorite bookstore in Knoxville (shoutout to Union Ave for supplying all the hidden gems). Would have given the first half of this book 2-3 stars, but the second half really swept me off my feet.

To put it plainly, this book is a midlife exploration of sexuality facilitated by primary source research into the lives of two dead artists to whom the narrator has developed a parasocial relationship. A little exposition-heavy, but I really enjoyed it on the whole.

[Tati · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really liked this! it’s definitely not for everyone, but i love being stuck in ann’s head. also props for getting me into a piece of art history i knew nothing about.

[Sahar Khraibani · Rating 5 out of 5]

enjoyable

[Momò Nin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable!

was this book an autobiography somehow? (i guess not but however...)

it read like a romance of Jean-Luc Godard, but in a story frame of La Notte by Antonioni

[S]

It is kind of un-star-able.