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The Great Man
National Bestseller and Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Oscar Feldman, the renowned figurative painter, has passed away. As his obituary notes, Oscar is survived by his wife, Abigail, their son, Ethan, and his sister, the well-known abstract painter Maxine Feldman. What the obituary does not note, however, is that Oscar is also survived by his longtime mistress, Teddy St. Cloud, and their daughters.
As two biographers interview the women in an attempt to set the record straight, the open secret of his affair reaches a boiling point and a devastating skeleton threatens to come to light. From the acclaimed author of The Epicure's Lament , a scintillating novel of secrets, love, and legacy in the New York art world.
"Mischievous...funny, astute...As unexpectedly generous as it is entertaining.... Christensen is a witty observer of the art universe." — The New York Times
Oscar Feldman, the renowned figurative painter, has passed away. As his obituary notes, Oscar is survived by his wife, Abigail, their son, Ethan, and his sister, the well-known abstract painter Maxine Feldman. What the obituary does not note, however, is that Oscar is also survived by his longtime mistress, Teddy St. Cloud, and their daughters.
As two biographers interview the women in an attempt to set the record straight, the open secret of his affair reaches a boiling point and a devastating skeleton threatens to come to light. From the acclaimed author of The Epicure's Lament , a scintillating novel of secrets, love, and legacy in the New York art world.
"Mischievous...funny, astute...As unexpectedly generous as it is entertaining.... Christensen is a witty observer of the art universe." — The New York Times
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
134 people are currently reading
2478 people want to read
About the author
Kate Christensen
19 books422 followersKATE CHRISTENSEN is the author of eleven novels, most recently The Arizona Triangle (as Sydney Graves) and Good Company. She has also published two food-centric memoirs. Her fourth novel, The Great Man, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Her stories, reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. She lives in northern New Mexico with her husband and their two dogs.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 495 reviews
June 1, 2009
I can't believe this won the PEN/Faulkner.
Yes, it's great to read a novel about smart, interesting women. Yes, it does my heart good to see those older women portrayed as alluring people who still have sex.
BUT THE SENTENCES. The sentences! Christensen can't write a clean sentence to save her life! Just to open a page at random: "Teddy had had Oscar, Lila Sam, but Lila had had son, Teddy daughters; Teddy had had independence, Lila security."
And the way her characters' diction veers all over the place! One second the down-and-dirty artist from Brooklyn is saying, "I looked pretty good after a bunch of low-life scumbags"; literally a few lines later, he's saying (aloud, mind you, aloud--this is all dialogue we're talking about), "Both of us had suffered from past heartbreaks...we always took care to avoid causing more pain." Sorry; no. You can't have a dude talking like a Sheepshead Bay kid in one sentence, and John Updike in the next. No one's voice is consistent in this novel; no one's character is fully convincing.
And this is to say nothing of the sloppiness. On page 7 the furniture is odorless ("everything had discharged its freight of sediment, the walls of the house, her furniture and belongings, and now it just smelled clean and impersonal"); on page 19, Henry's lying "on Teddy's long green velvet couch, which smelled of dust and years-old incense."
And the imitations of New York Times articles! Man, if you want to be reminded of how *hard* it is to write good, straightforward reporting, and how few people can do it well, get a load of these laughable attempts to nail the style of the paper of record.
I could go on. And on.
Yes, it's great to read a novel about smart, interesting women. Yes, it does my heart good to see those older women portrayed as alluring people who still have sex.
BUT THE SENTENCES. The sentences! Christensen can't write a clean sentence to save her life! Just to open a page at random: "Teddy had had Oscar, Lila Sam, but Lila had had son, Teddy daughters; Teddy had had independence, Lila security."
And the way her characters' diction veers all over the place! One second the down-and-dirty artist from Brooklyn is saying, "I looked pretty good after a bunch of low-life scumbags"; literally a few lines later, he's saying (aloud, mind you, aloud--this is all dialogue we're talking about), "Both of us had suffered from past heartbreaks...we always took care to avoid causing more pain." Sorry; no. You can't have a dude talking like a Sheepshead Bay kid in one sentence, and John Updike in the next. No one's voice is consistent in this novel; no one's character is fully convincing.
And this is to say nothing of the sloppiness. On page 7 the furniture is odorless ("everything had discharged its freight of sediment, the walls of the house, her furniture and belongings, and now it just smelled clean and impersonal"); on page 19, Henry's lying "on Teddy's long green velvet couch, which smelled of dust and years-old incense."
And the imitations of New York Times articles! Man, if you want to be reminded of how *hard* it is to write good, straightforward reporting, and how few people can do it well, get a load of these laughable attempts to nail the style of the paper of record.
I could go on. And on.
June 10, 2023
The great man in The Great Man is Oscar Feldman, an American painter of female nudes at a time when his contemporaries were working in some form of abstract art. Oscar has been dead now for five years. He had two families, one with his wife and one with his mistress of over 40 years, and three children. Oscar’s sister, Maxine, is arguably as good of an artist as Oscar. Now two biographers want to tell Oscar’s life story and in doing so are interviewing the women who played a role in his life.
It is appropriate that Oscar is dead at the beginning of this story, because it is the women who are the main attraction here. Abigail, Oscar’s wife; Claire, Oscar’s mistress who goes by the nickname of Teddy; Lila, Teddy’s best friend and the one who gave her the nickname, and Maxine. There is plenty of intelligence in this group and no lack of personality. I enjoyed getting to know them all.
Much of the novel is dialogue, so it reads quickly, and it is often through the dialogue that the personalities shine. All of the women loved Oscar in their own way, but the more you learn about him the more you question why; it seems the only irrational part of their outlook on life. The novel is not perfect. I was frustrated, for instance, when certain descriptions of characters were repeated. But reading about these strong, intelligent women, the lives they lead and how they continue to adapt and change was enough fun that the flaws seemed minor.
It is appropriate that Oscar is dead at the beginning of this story, because it is the women who are the main attraction here. Abigail, Oscar’s wife; Claire, Oscar’s mistress who goes by the nickname of Teddy; Lila, Teddy’s best friend and the one who gave her the nickname, and Maxine. There is plenty of intelligence in this group and no lack of personality. I enjoyed getting to know them all.
Much of the novel is dialogue, so it reads quickly, and it is often through the dialogue that the personalities shine. All of the women loved Oscar in their own way, but the more you learn about him the more you question why; it seems the only irrational part of their outlook on life. The novel is not perfect. I was frustrated, for instance, when certain descriptions of characters were repeated. But reading about these strong, intelligent women, the lives they lead and how they continue to adapt and change was enough fun that the flaws seemed minor.
May 22, 2008
I was going to write a typical Goodreads-y kind of review for this, but I'm too damn tired, so here's the review I posted on my blog:
Kate Christensen’s newest novel The Great Man, for which she recently won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, is actually about three women and their relationship to one not-so-great man, the figurative painter Oscar Feldman. Claire St. Cloud, or “Teddy” as she’s known to her confidants, was Oscar’s lover, Abigail Feldman, his widow and the mother of his autistic son, and Maxine Feldman, his sister, an abstract painter and a masculine lesbian. While he was alive, these three women orbited Oscar each in their own path, glimpsing one another at openings and parties, but never approaching, knowing of each other’s existence but not acknowledging it.
After Oscar’s death, a pair of biographers come calling in search of the life of the great Oscar Feldman. These two biographers -- Henry Burke, a tentative 40 year-old white man heading into a difficult stretch in his marriage, and Ralph Washington, a gay black man struggling with his own analysis and critique of Oscar’s work – dredge up feelings long buried and force hard confrontations between the three female protagonists.
Christensen’s previous novel, The Epicure’s Lament, was a tour de force of voice, a blistering first-person screed that showed her flair for language, pacing and character. Here, the voice is reserved, but the point of view is constantly shifting. Indeed, the genius of this novel is in how, through its floating perspective, it coaxes the reader into making certain assumptions about the characters, and then subverts those assumptions. In this way, it mirrors the experience of a work of art in the critical marketplace. Much of the book is concerned with the legacies of the two artists – Oscar and Maxine – and how their work has been and will be perceived by critics. While some of the theoretical discussions of art seem facile, Christensen makes a sly comment on the “eye of the beholder.” Implicit in these discussions, of course, is the notion of taste and its inherent place within perspective.
The novel opens on Teddy, a particularly crafty bit of manipulation on Christensen’s part, as it places the reader firmly in Teddy’s camp, never giving him a second to see Teddy as the “other woman.” We get Teddy’s view of Abigail, “Oscar’s fat wife,” and feel her sacrifices (when she went into labor with Oscar’s twin daughters, Ruby and Samantha, it was her friend Lila she called, since she couldn’t call Oscar. In fact, she learned of his death when she read the obituary in the New York Times).
Just as we settle perfectly beside elegant, seductive Teddy, Christensen moves on to Maxine, Oscar’s cantankerous sister. Maxine can’t stand Teddy, who she feels is all flash and no substance and a home-wrecker. Maxine, easily the least happy of the characters, hungers for some sort of companionship, preferably that of younger assistant Katerina. Maxine feels “that her advanced age should have granted her some kind of immunity from the humiliation of unrequited lust. That it didn’t was yet another of the many indignities of old age.”
Surprisingly, the indignities of old age are few and far between in this story of three women, all of whom are north of 70. Not since Kingsley Amis’ The Old Devils has there been a novel that addresses aging so well. Where Amis was largely concerned with the collision between infirmity and desire, his old men chasing women like twenty-year-olds while gingerly biting into toast to avoid rotted teeth, Christensen are more feminine concerns. Companionship, or lack thereof, motherhood and its consolations, and plenty of domestic issues take precedence in The Great Man. That’s not to say there’s no lust – there’s plenty of it. Requited and unrequited love takes up much of the book. Sure there’s talk of exhaustion and failing erections, and yes, one of the characters discusses her will, but the reader is left with the sense that these women are vibrantly alive, still entangled in the messiness of love and sex, of family, of living.
For all the comparisons between Amis and Christensen (Is it a coincidence that the Christensen chose a poem from Amis’ good friend Philip Larkin as her epigraph?), there is a key difference between her work and Amis’. Kingsley Amis published The Old Devils in 1986, when he was 64 years old and just nine years from the grave (not that he could’ve known it). He was writing from experience. Christensen published The Great Man in 2007 at the age of 45. For Christensen to so thoroughly craft the twilight of these women’s lives is a remarkable feat of imagination. To project forward is a hundredfold harder than looking back, and Christensen masters it with this novel.
Among the pleasures of Christensen’s writing are the dining and cooking scenes. Many authors, most in fact, treat eating as something the characters occasionally must do, no different than crossing the street, or as a prop to fill the scene with action, or a topic of conversation, maybe. But nobody uses food quite as well as Christensen. The Epicure’s Lament was laden with detailed descriptions of meals prepared, including a fine recipe for Shrimp Newberg. For the narrator, Hugo Whittier, food is a benchmark of culture, like a play or a novel, and its proper execution a matter of pride and honor. The Great Man is no different. Many of the scenes revolve around a meal. When Henry first visits Teddy, she seduces him with a subtle, surprisingly tasty stew:
“The food, which looked bland and unprepossessing, was subtle and amazing. The couscous tasted nutty and buttery. The rich chicken stew was laced with hints of saffron, cinnamon, cayenne, lemon zest, and something else, unfamiliar and exotic, but these things announced themselves very faintly, so he had to concentrate to taste them through the perfectly cooked meat and grain.”
Each meal reveals something about its maker. Teddy’s dish, made from a chicken for which she bartered and vegetables from her backyard garden, displays not only her skills as a seductress, but also her independence, her resourcefulness. It’s a different story when Maxine attends a dinner party at her longtime dealer, Michael Rubinstein’s house:
“The soup bowls were whisked away and plates of summery salad replaced them: a Japanese woodcut sea of curly pale green frisee lettuce on which floated almond slice rafts, each holding a tiny, near-translucent poached baby shrimp as pink and naked as a newborn. Crisp blanched haricots verts darted through the sea like needle-nosed fish. Cerise-rimmed radish slices bobbed here and there like sea foam. The dressing was a briny green lime juice and olive oil emulsion. Maxine stared at the thing, trying to imagine the person who had so painstakingly made it. It would be demolished in three bites. She would have been perfectly happy with a wedge of iceberg lettuce with a glop of bottled Russian dressing, like you got in the olden days. Food had become so fussy and contrived.”
Christensen’s obsession with food can, at times, overwhelm (I stopped noticing how often a scene revolved around a meal about halfway through the book), but it adds a verisimilitude that eludes lesser authors. Christensen’s characters eat, they sleep and work. They live.
Kate Christensen’s newest novel The Great Man, for which she recently won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, is actually about three women and their relationship to one not-so-great man, the figurative painter Oscar Feldman. Claire St. Cloud, or “Teddy” as she’s known to her confidants, was Oscar’s lover, Abigail Feldman, his widow and the mother of his autistic son, and Maxine Feldman, his sister, an abstract painter and a masculine lesbian. While he was alive, these three women orbited Oscar each in their own path, glimpsing one another at openings and parties, but never approaching, knowing of each other’s existence but not acknowledging it.
After Oscar’s death, a pair of biographers come calling in search of the life of the great Oscar Feldman. These two biographers -- Henry Burke, a tentative 40 year-old white man heading into a difficult stretch in his marriage, and Ralph Washington, a gay black man struggling with his own analysis and critique of Oscar’s work – dredge up feelings long buried and force hard confrontations between the three female protagonists.
Christensen’s previous novel, The Epicure’s Lament, was a tour de force of voice, a blistering first-person screed that showed her flair for language, pacing and character. Here, the voice is reserved, but the point of view is constantly shifting. Indeed, the genius of this novel is in how, through its floating perspective, it coaxes the reader into making certain assumptions about the characters, and then subverts those assumptions. In this way, it mirrors the experience of a work of art in the critical marketplace. Much of the book is concerned with the legacies of the two artists – Oscar and Maxine – and how their work has been and will be perceived by critics. While some of the theoretical discussions of art seem facile, Christensen makes a sly comment on the “eye of the beholder.” Implicit in these discussions, of course, is the notion of taste and its inherent place within perspective.
The novel opens on Teddy, a particularly crafty bit of manipulation on Christensen’s part, as it places the reader firmly in Teddy’s camp, never giving him a second to see Teddy as the “other woman.” We get Teddy’s view of Abigail, “Oscar’s fat wife,” and feel her sacrifices (when she went into labor with Oscar’s twin daughters, Ruby and Samantha, it was her friend Lila she called, since she couldn’t call Oscar. In fact, she learned of his death when she read the obituary in the New York Times).
Just as we settle perfectly beside elegant, seductive Teddy, Christensen moves on to Maxine, Oscar’s cantankerous sister. Maxine can’t stand Teddy, who she feels is all flash and no substance and a home-wrecker. Maxine, easily the least happy of the characters, hungers for some sort of companionship, preferably that of younger assistant Katerina. Maxine feels “that her advanced age should have granted her some kind of immunity from the humiliation of unrequited lust. That it didn’t was yet another of the many indignities of old age.”
Surprisingly, the indignities of old age are few and far between in this story of three women, all of whom are north of 70. Not since Kingsley Amis’ The Old Devils has there been a novel that addresses aging so well. Where Amis was largely concerned with the collision between infirmity and desire, his old men chasing women like twenty-year-olds while gingerly biting into toast to avoid rotted teeth, Christensen are more feminine concerns. Companionship, or lack thereof, motherhood and its consolations, and plenty of domestic issues take precedence in The Great Man. That’s not to say there’s no lust – there’s plenty of it. Requited and unrequited love takes up much of the book. Sure there’s talk of exhaustion and failing erections, and yes, one of the characters discusses her will, but the reader is left with the sense that these women are vibrantly alive, still entangled in the messiness of love and sex, of family, of living.
For all the comparisons between Amis and Christensen (Is it a coincidence that the Christensen chose a poem from Amis’ good friend Philip Larkin as her epigraph?), there is a key difference between her work and Amis’. Kingsley Amis published The Old Devils in 1986, when he was 64 years old and just nine years from the grave (not that he could’ve known it). He was writing from experience. Christensen published The Great Man in 2007 at the age of 45. For Christensen to so thoroughly craft the twilight of these women’s lives is a remarkable feat of imagination. To project forward is a hundredfold harder than looking back, and Christensen masters it with this novel.
Among the pleasures of Christensen’s writing are the dining and cooking scenes. Many authors, most in fact, treat eating as something the characters occasionally must do, no different than crossing the street, or as a prop to fill the scene with action, or a topic of conversation, maybe. But nobody uses food quite as well as Christensen. The Epicure’s Lament was laden with detailed descriptions of meals prepared, including a fine recipe for Shrimp Newberg. For the narrator, Hugo Whittier, food is a benchmark of culture, like a play or a novel, and its proper execution a matter of pride and honor. The Great Man is no different. Many of the scenes revolve around a meal. When Henry first visits Teddy, she seduces him with a subtle, surprisingly tasty stew:
“The food, which looked bland and unprepossessing, was subtle and amazing. The couscous tasted nutty and buttery. The rich chicken stew was laced with hints of saffron, cinnamon, cayenne, lemon zest, and something else, unfamiliar and exotic, but these things announced themselves very faintly, so he had to concentrate to taste them through the perfectly cooked meat and grain.”
Each meal reveals something about its maker. Teddy’s dish, made from a chicken for which she bartered and vegetables from her backyard garden, displays not only her skills as a seductress, but also her independence, her resourcefulness. It’s a different story when Maxine attends a dinner party at her longtime dealer, Michael Rubinstein’s house:
“The soup bowls were whisked away and plates of summery salad replaced them: a Japanese woodcut sea of curly pale green frisee lettuce on which floated almond slice rafts, each holding a tiny, near-translucent poached baby shrimp as pink and naked as a newborn. Crisp blanched haricots verts darted through the sea like needle-nosed fish. Cerise-rimmed radish slices bobbed here and there like sea foam. The dressing was a briny green lime juice and olive oil emulsion. Maxine stared at the thing, trying to imagine the person who had so painstakingly made it. It would be demolished in three bites. She would have been perfectly happy with a wedge of iceberg lettuce with a glop of bottled Russian dressing, like you got in the olden days. Food had become so fussy and contrived.”
Christensen’s obsession with food can, at times, overwhelm (I stopped noticing how often a scene revolved around a meal about halfway through the book), but it adds a verisimilitude that eludes lesser authors. Christensen’s characters eat, they sleep and work. They live.
August 2, 2008
I picked this book up in an airport bookstore as it had an award and I thought it might be a good plane read. While I finished it in two flights, I can't say that was fast enough.
The story is about an artist, after his death, and the women who surround him; his wife (and their grown autistic son), his sister (also an artist), and his mistress (and their twin daughters). It's a "discussable" book in the sense that I'm sure some people would love how the characters are portrayed and there are some compelling moments that cause you to wonder about the nature of attraction and self-fulfillment. Beyond that, I can't say that I connected with any of the characters.
If you're ever in Raleigh, North Carolina this book is waiting for you on the lend one/take one bookshelf at the Marriott Courtyard.
The story is about an artist, after his death, and the women who surround him; his wife (and their grown autistic son), his sister (also an artist), and his mistress (and their twin daughters). It's a "discussable" book in the sense that I'm sure some people would love how the characters are portrayed and there are some compelling moments that cause you to wonder about the nature of attraction and self-fulfillment. Beyond that, I can't say that I connected with any of the characters.
If you're ever in Raleigh, North Carolina this book is waiting for you on the lend one/take one bookshelf at the Marriott Courtyard.
April 20, 2011
My first experience with Kate Christensen and her work was simply magical. Her mellow prose and smooth flow of narration was skillfully marred with sharp but true sarcasm, the story felt like real life brimming with intellectual yet spicy richness, very much beyond the usual fun things I tend to read. I rarely pick up heavy and difficult books, sometimes it's nice to pick up a fun story that's an equivalent of junk food, but with Christensen you get all the hot, sizzling action, you read about secrets and kinks that people have and still nourish your head with deeper ideas of why people stay together and love each other. The separation between lust and passion, love and tenderness is sharply broken with each character in the novel but given chance they prove that crossing lines is easier now that Oscar is gone.
I found this book to be stunning, luscious, naughty and brilliant, very much to the point and sometimes crass when it came to the language. This novel left me choked up, full of thoughts swarming in my head, a whole locust of ideas. I was finding new things hidden in the plot and new reasons for character's actions on my way home on the bus, while cooking or even in the shower. After reading this I still feel connected to the vibrant story of a fictional painter and the women in his life; his wife, sister, the mistress and her friend and other people who mingled with him in the art world, crossing moral lines of what is art and what is pure lust. Oscar Feldman, the great man of the art world left a legacy after his death; it was the women who were in his life and not the art that took the main stage in this novel, and relationships between them were as rough as the stormy seas. After his death they slowly realized that him being gone changed things, in what way, well you have to read and find out, but I promise this is an interesting read. There was also a lot of great food going on, from wines to spicy lettuces, saucy dishes and wonderful appetizers which were all part of this story, and in fact it made me crave gourmet food more than ever. I even tired the wine that Teddy, his mistress, drank and it was sumptuous.
I was impressed at the dept the author was able to reach, for a young woman she took the ladies in the novel, who were in their seventies and eighties, and made them believable and captivating, it all sounded like words coming from a seasoned writer. Was the man great, yeah, maybe, but the women surrounding him were more than he could have ever imagined or appreciated. Oscar was lucky to have Abigail, Maxine, Teddy and Lila, they took over my mind as I read the book and they are still running through my thoughts, this book really leaves a lasting impression, bravo!
I found this book to be stunning, luscious, naughty and brilliant, very much to the point and sometimes crass when it came to the language. This novel left me choked up, full of thoughts swarming in my head, a whole locust of ideas. I was finding new things hidden in the plot and new reasons for character's actions on my way home on the bus, while cooking or even in the shower. After reading this I still feel connected to the vibrant story of a fictional painter and the women in his life; his wife, sister, the mistress and her friend and other people who mingled with him in the art world, crossing moral lines of what is art and what is pure lust. Oscar Feldman, the great man of the art world left a legacy after his death; it was the women who were in his life and not the art that took the main stage in this novel, and relationships between them were as rough as the stormy seas. After his death they slowly realized that him being gone changed things, in what way, well you have to read and find out, but I promise this is an interesting read. There was also a lot of great food going on, from wines to spicy lettuces, saucy dishes and wonderful appetizers which were all part of this story, and in fact it made me crave gourmet food more than ever. I even tired the wine that Teddy, his mistress, drank and it was sumptuous.
I was impressed at the dept the author was able to reach, for a young woman she took the ladies in the novel, who were in their seventies and eighties, and made them believable and captivating, it all sounded like words coming from a seasoned writer. Was the man great, yeah, maybe, but the women surrounding him were more than he could have ever imagined or appreciated. Oscar was lucky to have Abigail, Maxine, Teddy and Lila, they took over my mind as I read the book and they are still running through my thoughts, this book really leaves a lasting impression, bravo!
December 31, 2023
یک رمان ساده و در عین سادگی بسیار گیرا و جذاب.
نکتهی صابل توجه ترجمهی بشیار عالی این کتاب بود.👏👌
نکتهی صابل توجه ترجمهی بشیار عالی این کتاب بود.👏👌
July 13, 2014
This book answers many important questions, such as what do old New Yorkers eat and drink when they go over to each other's apartments to hash out decades-old resentments/misunderstandings, or just to hang out with old friends and possibly talk about and/or have sex? Also, what do they eat and drink when they go to restaurants and dinner parties? Do they like this food and drink? Do they, for example, like the strange sauvignon blanc ordered by the gay "schwartze" who is writing their dead husband's biography? NO THEY DO NOT. It is oddly fizzy and metallic-tasting. Why oh why did he not consult the sweet, little old lady before ordering the wine? What the hell kind of biographer is that? Why, apparently he is the kind you can buy to write a sympathetic account of the so-called great man, which will then get panned in the Times.
This book also answers many questions about black people, such as, can they be writers? Artists? Intelligent housekeepers? By gosh, they can! It's downright amazing! They can also be somewhat attractive, albeit with a propensity to gather a sweaty "sheen," or sometimes they just "gleam." Their skin is also sometimes "glossy."
Never fear, the answer to the question of what the great man was really like is also bestowed upon us. Apparently, for his mistress he was like a bear, while for his wife he was like a big dog. He wasn't really "there" for any of his children.
Also, have you ever wondered what it's like to have twins? Well, it seems one turns out exactly like the father, and the other exactly like the mother. The mother finds that it's easy to raise the one who is like her, while the father only paints a portrait of the one who is like him. It's so simple, it can be described in a couple of sentences when the twins are 40 years old.
I can remember only two scenes in this book that did not involve people having breakfast/lunch/drinks/dinner together, and those were both with Maxine, the sister of the "great" man. Conveniently, she is also a great or maybe great, well-known artist, who is not great enough to have a biography written of her, but is comfortably well off and cutely re-falls in love with an old flame ( who just happens to hold the keys to a scandalous secret, which I won't give away as that would be a spoiler, in case anyone ever wants to read this book in the future, which I can't imagine but could happen you never know!!!). In one scene Maxine is hanging around her studio, and in another she walks her dog. She does feed the dog breakfast while walking him (???), but since he's not human I won't count that. Maxine made me want to give this book three stars, which would mean (according to Goodreads) that I liked the book. However, I could only muster up two stars, meaning it was OK.
Wait, there is another scence where two characters have sex before eating or drinking anything!!! But then they are terribly hungry so they order Peruvian food and drink the bottle of champagne one of them has conveniently brought along in his briefcase. "How odd, to be calling out for Peruvian food. What was Peruvian food, anyway?" one of them thinks.
The insights into the contemporary art world and the creative process in general suffer by comparison to other novels about art and artists that I have read recently, namely The Blazing World and The Flamethrowers. Plus, there's the language. "Katerina opened the door with a motion of her arm like a knife through water. "Hello," she said. "Come in." " Why must Katerina open the door in such a fashion? Katerina is a minor character, benignly lurking in the background through a few scenes, contributing very little to the plot (not that there is much of a plot), just being a mild Hungarian/sexual distraction for Maxine. Why do we have to hear about how her arm moves when she opens the door???????????? And how does a knife move through water, anyway? Unfortunately, that is one question that this book does not answer. If you want to know the answer, you should read a different book.
This book also answers many questions about black people, such as, can they be writers? Artists? Intelligent housekeepers? By gosh, they can! It's downright amazing! They can also be somewhat attractive, albeit with a propensity to gather a sweaty "sheen," or sometimes they just "gleam." Their skin is also sometimes "glossy."
Never fear, the answer to the question of what the great man was really like is also bestowed upon us. Apparently, for his mistress he was like a bear, while for his wife he was like a big dog. He wasn't really "there" for any of his children.
Also, have you ever wondered what it's like to have twins? Well, it seems one turns out exactly like the father, and the other exactly like the mother. The mother finds that it's easy to raise the one who is like her, while the father only paints a portrait of the one who is like him. It's so simple, it can be described in a couple of sentences when the twins are 40 years old.
I can remember only two scenes in this book that did not involve people having breakfast/lunch/drinks/dinner together, and those were both with Maxine, the sister of the "great" man. Conveniently, she is also a great or maybe great, well-known artist, who is not great enough to have a biography written of her, but is comfortably well off and cutely re-falls in love with an old flame ( who just happens to hold the keys to a scandalous secret, which I won't give away as that would be a spoiler, in case anyone ever wants to read this book in the future, which I can't imagine but could happen you never know!!!). In one scene Maxine is hanging around her studio, and in another she walks her dog. She does feed the dog breakfast while walking him (???), but since he's not human I won't count that. Maxine made me want to give this book three stars, which would mean (according to Goodreads) that I liked the book. However, I could only muster up two stars, meaning it was OK.
Wait, there is another scence where two characters have sex before eating or drinking anything!!! But then they are terribly hungry so they order Peruvian food and drink the bottle of champagne one of them has conveniently brought along in his briefcase. "How odd, to be calling out for Peruvian food. What was Peruvian food, anyway?" one of them thinks.
The insights into the contemporary art world and the creative process in general suffer by comparison to other novels about art and artists that I have read recently, namely The Blazing World and The Flamethrowers. Plus, there's the language. "Katerina opened the door with a motion of her arm like a knife through water. "Hello," she said. "Come in." " Why must Katerina open the door in such a fashion? Katerina is a minor character, benignly lurking in the background through a few scenes, contributing very little to the plot (not that there is much of a plot), just being a mild Hungarian/sexual distraction for Maxine. Why do we have to hear about how her arm moves when she opens the door???????????? And how does a knife move through water, anyway? Unfortunately, that is one question that this book does not answer. If you want to know the answer, you should read a different book.
November 19, 2021
This was one the few Pen/Faulkner Award winners I hadn't read yet because it didn't look like something I would enjoy reading but it turned out to be better than I expected. Oscar Feldman is an artist who painted only female nudes who died a few years ago. Two writers have separately decided to write his biography and so begin interviewing people from his life. The main characters are his wife Abigail, who has a mentally challenged son by him, his sister Maxine, an abstract painter, and his longtime mistress Teddy who has two grown daughters by him. Oscar, evidently, seduced all of his models as well as any other woman he could and appeared to me to be about as unlikable as anyone could be but is portrayed as someone who everyone in the book liked. Anyway, the book focuses on the interactions between the various characters and reveals some secrets that had been buried for years. It's a very well written book that kept me interested but not the sort of thing I usually read.
April 22, 2019
I wound up really enjoying this book and relishing its depiction of the inner lives of women. That said, the novel is a bit clumsy at times, especially when it "tells" rather than "shows."
Also, the male characters (with the exception of Lewis) are not as remarkable or interesting as I would like. That I confused the two male biographers at the end is probably a vote against my ability as a reader "or" it could be that the two fellas were a bit caricatured to begin with.
I give "The Great Man" a Four mostly because it provided a surprisingly complicated glimpse at the lives and motivations of women in our culture. A culture that is, still, largely engineered to satisfy men. And how for many women, satisfying men has been an end to a means, as uncomfortable as that may be to acknowledge.
In other words, this is not a book with an agenda other than to explore how women can be a surprise -even to themselves- no matter how old they are.
Also, the male characters (with the exception of Lewis) are not as remarkable or interesting as I would like. That I confused the two male biographers at the end is probably a vote against my ability as a reader "or" it could be that the two fellas were a bit caricatured to begin with.
I give "The Great Man" a Four mostly because it provided a surprisingly complicated glimpse at the lives and motivations of women in our culture. A culture that is, still, largely engineered to satisfy men. And how for many women, satisfying men has been an end to a means, as uncomfortable as that may be to acknowledge.
In other words, this is not a book with an agenda other than to explore how women can be a surprise -even to themselves- no matter how old they are.
October 24, 2008
The novel begins with the newspaper obit of Oscar Feldman, an influential painter whose work consisted entirely of female nudes, and it ends with a newspaper review of two just-published biographies of Feldman. Most of the action in the novel takes place five years after Feldman’s death, with detours into the past and the future.
Feldman had a wife, Abigail, and a retarded son to whom she was devoted and whom Oscar pretty much ignored. They lived in an apartment on Riverside Drive purchased by her wealthy parents when they married. He also had a long-term mistress, Claire (Teddy) St. Cloud, who lived in Brooklyn and with whom he had twin daughters, Ruby and Samantha. The other major player in the novel is his elder sister, Maxine, an abstract painter who’s got far less attention from the art world than Oscar. Abigail and Teddy have never met, though both know a great deal about the other. Maxine—a formidable elderly lesbian in her 80ies—supports Abigail but doesn’t like her and thoroughly disapproves of Teddy. Enter the two biographers to interview all these women: Henry, a college professor with a busy wife and infant son, who’s obviously not getting enough attention from his wife. Ralph is black and gay, but not “out”. There’s also a long-kept secret, known to the women, that will come out and make a splash in the art world.
The biographers’ questions and the secret they don’t really care to keep bring the women together and move them to deal finally with Oscar’s death. Teddy and her best friend Lila, both in their seventies, start affairs, Ruby has an affair with one of the biographers, and Abigail develops a different relationship with the other. Maxine’s career gets a boost when the secret comes out and she reconnects with a lover she let pass her by. One of the author’s stated aims for the book was to write about love and relationships among older women, one of those subjects novelists usually ignore—sex over seventy.
Christensen writes well and I laughed in a number of places, especially as Maxine characterizes (satirizes) a young woman who explains her work in contemporary art world terms. I liked it too that Maxine comes later to like and admire that same young woman.
Feldman had a wife, Abigail, and a retarded son to whom she was devoted and whom Oscar pretty much ignored. They lived in an apartment on Riverside Drive purchased by her wealthy parents when they married. He also had a long-term mistress, Claire (Teddy) St. Cloud, who lived in Brooklyn and with whom he had twin daughters, Ruby and Samantha. The other major player in the novel is his elder sister, Maxine, an abstract painter who’s got far less attention from the art world than Oscar. Abigail and Teddy have never met, though both know a great deal about the other. Maxine—a formidable elderly lesbian in her 80ies—supports Abigail but doesn’t like her and thoroughly disapproves of Teddy. Enter the two biographers to interview all these women: Henry, a college professor with a busy wife and infant son, who’s obviously not getting enough attention from his wife. Ralph is black and gay, but not “out”. There’s also a long-kept secret, known to the women, that will come out and make a splash in the art world.
The biographers’ questions and the secret they don’t really care to keep bring the women together and move them to deal finally with Oscar’s death. Teddy and her best friend Lila, both in their seventies, start affairs, Ruby has an affair with one of the biographers, and Abigail develops a different relationship with the other. Maxine’s career gets a boost when the secret comes out and she reconnects with a lover she let pass her by. One of the author’s stated aims for the book was to write about love and relationships among older women, one of those subjects novelists usually ignore—sex over seventy.
Christensen writes well and I laughed in a number of places, especially as Maxine characterizes (satirizes) a young woman who explains her work in contemporary art world terms. I liked it too that Maxine comes later to like and admire that same young woman.
January 20, 2009
Do you know who your grandmother's sleeping with?
Refreshingly, Christensen's book gives us four very sympathetic female characters over the age of 70 who, in traditional views of the life a "great man" (in this case, a fictionalized artist named Oscar Feldman), would be marginalized as muse/mistress/wife/sister, but instead come fully, and vibrantly to life. Which is quite clearly the point.
The dialogue is witty, and the partnerships forged in the art world, and in romantic life, are well-observed and interesting. I especially liked a portion where Maxine Feldman, the "great" artist's sister and fellow painter, reflects on how balancing art and life is like being torn between two different rooms: one is always feeling pulled by the other and worried about not succeeding in it.
Reading this book made me want to be a cool, opinionated, and sassy old lady someday. It also made me really hungry and wish that I knew what kielbasa sausage was so I could eat it. Dispelling the cliche of the fusty and irrelevant old grandma that is all too often the perception in fiction, and life, I felt sheepish at the way we tend to fixate on the young and all-to-easily discard the opinions of parents and grandparents.
I noticed that some other reviewers found some odd racial undertones in the novel, and I noticed them, too. I still haven't decided what the author's intentions might have been. There was also a sex scene near the end that seemed to deny logic and physics, but I digress. Read this if you want something entertaining, quick, and still brainy.
Refreshingly, Christensen's book gives us four very sympathetic female characters over the age of 70 who, in traditional views of the life a "great man" (in this case, a fictionalized artist named Oscar Feldman), would be marginalized as muse/mistress/wife/sister, but instead come fully, and vibrantly to life. Which is quite clearly the point.
The dialogue is witty, and the partnerships forged in the art world, and in romantic life, are well-observed and interesting. I especially liked a portion where Maxine Feldman, the "great" artist's sister and fellow painter, reflects on how balancing art and life is like being torn between two different rooms: one is always feeling pulled by the other and worried about not succeeding in it.
Reading this book made me want to be a cool, opinionated, and sassy old lady someday. It also made me really hungry and wish that I knew what kielbasa sausage was so I could eat it. Dispelling the cliche of the fusty and irrelevant old grandma that is all too often the perception in fiction, and life, I felt sheepish at the way we tend to fixate on the young and all-to-easily discard the opinions of parents and grandparents.
I noticed that some other reviewers found some odd racial undertones in the novel, and I noticed them, too. I still haven't decided what the author's intentions might have been. There was also a sex scene near the end that seemed to deny logic and physics, but I digress. Read this if you want something entertaining, quick, and still brainy.
October 5, 2010
Starts off with a bang, but ends with a whimper. I tore through the first 200pp. or so, caught up in and propelled along by the gripping energy of the doubling, trebling, ever-twisting tale (with its twinned families, daughters, biographers, artists, paintings, etc.). Look Jonathan Franzen, a woman can write a "big" "important" novel, too (and about women, no less)! Once the secret was revealed, however, Christensen seemed to completely lose her momentum and discard all the different threads of that big, juicy novel of manners, turning away from the nuanced insights into the women's relationships with each other and Oscar and the New York art world and toward a series of skippable, half-assed, touchy-feely "biddy lit" (Christensen's words) episodes. Still, despite the squandering of that initial heady promise on unnecessary vignettes about 80yo women rediscovering their sexual drives (on the street in Brooklyn where I live, no less!), Christensen's mind is a wonder -- she's like an Edith Wharton for our more neurotic, more arty, more downtown age, and I can't wait to read her other books.
August 6, 2007
an author for whom i used to work at random house, kate christensen is the ultimate find -- wildly intelligent, hilarious, and socially observant to the pt of idiot savance. today's rave NY TIMES review is 100% justified. read it NOW. the most convincing and poignant portrayal of love in later life (and the thoughts women have of their prior loves) that i have ever read.
February 18, 2024
What a magnificent book!!! There is a passage in the book describing work/thoughts/ interruptions that I found just to the point. Here there is the transcription of the passage
"Qué? Máxime llamó. Siempre que Katherin estaba aquí, se hacía cargo del teléfono celular de Maxime, lo cual era un alivio, pero aun así, Maxime odiaba que la interrumpieran cuando estaba trabajando. Ser arrastrada del mundo de la pintura de regreso al mundo de la vida fue tan difícil como obligarse a sí misma a salir del mundo de la vida y regresar al mundo de la pintura. Una membrana gruesa pero permeable los separaba. Pasar de uno a otro requería un cambio de forma en el cerebro. Nunca estuvo completamente segura en ninguno de los dos mundos; la demanda del otro se podía escuchar, amortiguada desde dondequiera que estuvieras, así que sin importar dónde estuvieras, sentías una punzada de ansiedad de que algo pudiera salir mal en el otro en tu ausencia, algo que no habías logrado. cuenta antes de que te fueras. Habría sido mucho más fácil si la transición se hubiera podido lograr a través de una serie de esclusas de aire insonorizadas y cámaras de descompresión. Se sentía como si solo hubiera espacio en una vida para habitar uno de estos mundos paralelos, pero aquí estaba ella, tratando de meterlos a ambos. Cada vida paralela le chupaba el aire a la otra. Cuando estaba inmersa en su pintura, sintió lo poco que le quedaba y le entró el pánico porque nunca podría hacerlo todo antes de morir. Sólo se volvió más difícil a medida que crecía, más difícil porque, al igual que con el sueño, nunca podría estar tan plenamente en ninguno de los dos mundos como cuando era más joven. La membrana se había desgastado y debilitado con la edad, como todo lo demás.
"Qué? Máxime llamó. Siempre que Katherin estaba aquí, se hacía cargo del teléfono celular de Maxime, lo cual era un alivio, pero aun así, Maxime odiaba que la interrumpieran cuando estaba trabajando. Ser arrastrada del mundo de la pintura de regreso al mundo de la vida fue tan difícil como obligarse a sí misma a salir del mundo de la vida y regresar al mundo de la pintura. Una membrana gruesa pero permeable los separaba. Pasar de uno a otro requería un cambio de forma en el cerebro. Nunca estuvo completamente segura en ninguno de los dos mundos; la demanda del otro se podía escuchar, amortiguada desde dondequiera que estuvieras, así que sin importar dónde estuvieras, sentías una punzada de ansiedad de que algo pudiera salir mal en el otro en tu ausencia, algo que no habías logrado. cuenta antes de que te fueras. Habría sido mucho más fácil si la transición se hubiera podido lograr a través de una serie de esclusas de aire insonorizadas y cámaras de descompresión. Se sentía como si solo hubiera espacio en una vida para habitar uno de estos mundos paralelos, pero aquí estaba ella, tratando de meterlos a ambos. Cada vida paralela le chupaba el aire a la otra. Cuando estaba inmersa en su pintura, sintió lo poco que le quedaba y le entró el pánico porque nunca podría hacerlo todo antes de morir. Sólo se volvió más difícil a medida que crecía, más difícil porque, al igual que con el sueño, nunca podría estar tan plenamente en ninguno de los dos mundos como cuando era más joven. La membrana se había desgastado y debilitado con la edad, como todo lo demás.
November 10, 2010
This is a first-rate novel. It is a lively, fast read, but it is also satisfying, like a longer novel whose characters come to seem part of your life. One reason for that is the depth of the characters themselves, at least two of whom are truly memorable.
The situation on which story and meaning are built has its glamor and mystery. It’s slightly odd, but it feels real and it is by no means utterly strange to us. Oscar Feldman has been dead now for several years. His paintings of nude women sold well in the New York art market and still hang in major museums in New York and Europe. Oscar and his wife, Abigail, had a son. Oscar and his long-time devoted lover, Teddy, had two daughters. He maintained these two families for many years and the children are now in their thirties or forties. The two families have always known of each other but have had no contact; the daughters have not seen their brother.
The wife and lover have not had any contact. The children have never a sibling from the other family.
Oscar’s sister, Maxine, seems to hate Oscar, whom she regards as no artists at all; she’s the artist, she thinks. She’s also one of the all-time great grouchy curmudgeons, wracked by emotions she can’t control, frustrated, self-defeating and negative–and you can feel a little tenderness for her. She not only hates Oscar, but Teddy, too, has never met her nieces, the daughters of Teddy and her brother.
Two competing writers who intend to produce biographies of Oscar. Their interviews with the women inflame the conflict among the women Oscar left, but the conflict isn’t over his money – that’s been settled. Nothing to Teddy, the woman he loved nor to his daughters. The conflict comes from their competition for Oscar, of course, but also from years of being mistreated, all of them, by Oscar, who turns out to have been remote and cruel in some respects as well as a sexual giant who inspired all of them and apparently hundreds of other to love him.
Plenty of stuff comes out of the conflict among the women. We get a pretty good mystery, and late-in-life justice. The New York art world, the New York Times, publishers and book reviewers all have a small place in keeping everything interesting and amusing.
But what the book is about in my view, its substance and what grabbed me, had little to do with these trapping. The strong intelligent women in conflict over Oscar and his memory, are aging. Aged, rather-- in their 70s and 80s. Because they are articulate and sometimes discerning and sometimes self-aware, the book can be in less about art, infidelity, or even loyalty (yes, that, too) and more about aging. In particular, since men are not very important in this novel, it is about ageing of these women, what in their lives is filtered out with age and what remains, what in their lives can be reprocessed and what can yet develop, including, perhaps, sexual love. Maybe some of their forgiveness of Oscar, like their conflicts with each other will take on a different shape.
Mildly, the book is also a little about justice and injustice. Was Oscar rightly regarded in some quarters of the house of art as a great artist? Were any of the women and their children ever given their due? Wife and lover both suffered, even while they professed contentment with Oscar’s constant sexual adventures, even while he ignored his and their children, even while is competed, not always fairly with his sister Maxine. Now that the inquisitive biographers might reveal all, including a secret that unites the women, will they women remain loyal to Oscar and keep quiet? Will they even agree that he was worse than self-centered, perhaps someone who might be an example in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? Or will they think he was the rare man who truly understood each individual woman? I am not giving away much if I say that smidgeons of justice are doled out and it is a pleasure to see some of those smidgeons, a little sad to see some others. The great thing for me, though, was the substance of the characters and how wonderfully real they seemed.
It might have been interesting had Christensen explored the question why all those woman and many others loved Oscar no matter had badly he treated everyone. Evolutionary biologists–would they claim it is just the power of anyone who is treated as “great,” a genetically determined tendency to go for the male mostly likely to provide for the survival of the women’s own genes as well as his? I don’t think Christensen would like that idea, because although this novel isn’t a feminist tract, the strength and even somewhat confrontive charm of its females is too central to treat them as Oscar’s genetically controlled accomplices or even as simple lovers of male-power and social standing. Still, these women all had their needs, too, and the principal ones are still working through the wrinkles.
I’ll briefly mention some details I liked at lot.
Grounding. It was good for me to read this book right after Elisabeth Cox’s books because Cox gives very little details about things, surroundings, while Christensen keeps you right in the physical as well as the emotional scene. Teddy bites a fruit; juices run down her chin. When Teddy thinks of her couch, lately the locus of serious sex, the couch has a color, has a history and has a smell that definitely isn’t the result of the sex. These are not things that can be put down as mere description. Christensen makes them part of character and part of the reality and in doing so lends reality to every scene that balances the wonderful outflow of ideas the women produce.
Dialog. You might think of punchy dialog as a ping-pong interchange, challenges and responses in quick succession, full of snappy thrusts and counterthrusts. But Christensen allows her women to speak fully. A character might speak without a beat, without an interruption for half a page. The good part is that while we are really getting character out of this longish form of dialog, it is also punchy in a different way, funny or surprising. At the end of a long paragraph of Teddy’s dialog, she says that when she told Oscar what he himself was thinking that “was the equivalent of a blow job for him,” idea and a laughable surprise wrapped up together.
The situation on which story and meaning are built has its glamor and mystery. It’s slightly odd, but it feels real and it is by no means utterly strange to us. Oscar Feldman has been dead now for several years. His paintings of nude women sold well in the New York art market and still hang in major museums in New York and Europe. Oscar and his wife, Abigail, had a son. Oscar and his long-time devoted lover, Teddy, had two daughters. He maintained these two families for many years and the children are now in their thirties or forties. The two families have always known of each other but have had no contact; the daughters have not seen their brother.
The wife and lover have not had any contact. The children have never a sibling from the other family.
Oscar’s sister, Maxine, seems to hate Oscar, whom she regards as no artists at all; she’s the artist, she thinks. She’s also one of the all-time great grouchy curmudgeons, wracked by emotions she can’t control, frustrated, self-defeating and negative–and you can feel a little tenderness for her. She not only hates Oscar, but Teddy, too, has never met her nieces, the daughters of Teddy and her brother.
Two competing writers who intend to produce biographies of Oscar. Their interviews with the women inflame the conflict among the women Oscar left, but the conflict isn’t over his money – that’s been settled. Nothing to Teddy, the woman he loved nor to his daughters. The conflict comes from their competition for Oscar, of course, but also from years of being mistreated, all of them, by Oscar, who turns out to have been remote and cruel in some respects as well as a sexual giant who inspired all of them and apparently hundreds of other to love him.
Plenty of stuff comes out of the conflict among the women. We get a pretty good mystery, and late-in-life justice. The New York art world, the New York Times, publishers and book reviewers all have a small place in keeping everything interesting and amusing.
But what the book is about in my view, its substance and what grabbed me, had little to do with these trapping. The strong intelligent women in conflict over Oscar and his memory, are aging. Aged, rather-- in their 70s and 80s. Because they are articulate and sometimes discerning and sometimes self-aware, the book can be in less about art, infidelity, or even loyalty (yes, that, too) and more about aging. In particular, since men are not very important in this novel, it is about ageing of these women, what in their lives is filtered out with age and what remains, what in their lives can be reprocessed and what can yet develop, including, perhaps, sexual love. Maybe some of their forgiveness of Oscar, like their conflicts with each other will take on a different shape.
Mildly, the book is also a little about justice and injustice. Was Oscar rightly regarded in some quarters of the house of art as a great artist? Were any of the women and their children ever given their due? Wife and lover both suffered, even while they professed contentment with Oscar’s constant sexual adventures, even while he ignored his and their children, even while is competed, not always fairly with his sister Maxine. Now that the inquisitive biographers might reveal all, including a secret that unites the women, will they women remain loyal to Oscar and keep quiet? Will they even agree that he was worse than self-centered, perhaps someone who might be an example in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? Or will they think he was the rare man who truly understood each individual woman? I am not giving away much if I say that smidgeons of justice are doled out and it is a pleasure to see some of those smidgeons, a little sad to see some others. The great thing for me, though, was the substance of the characters and how wonderfully real they seemed.
It might have been interesting had Christensen explored the question why all those woman and many others loved Oscar no matter had badly he treated everyone. Evolutionary biologists–would they claim it is just the power of anyone who is treated as “great,” a genetically determined tendency to go for the male mostly likely to provide for the survival of the women’s own genes as well as his? I don’t think Christensen would like that idea, because although this novel isn’t a feminist tract, the strength and even somewhat confrontive charm of its females is too central to treat them as Oscar’s genetically controlled accomplices or even as simple lovers of male-power and social standing. Still, these women all had their needs, too, and the principal ones are still working through the wrinkles.
I’ll briefly mention some details I liked at lot.
Grounding. It was good for me to read this book right after Elisabeth Cox’s books because Cox gives very little details about things, surroundings, while Christensen keeps you right in the physical as well as the emotional scene. Teddy bites a fruit; juices run down her chin. When Teddy thinks of her couch, lately the locus of serious sex, the couch has a color, has a history and has a smell that definitely isn’t the result of the sex. These are not things that can be put down as mere description. Christensen makes them part of character and part of the reality and in doing so lends reality to every scene that balances the wonderful outflow of ideas the women produce.
Dialog. You might think of punchy dialog as a ping-pong interchange, challenges and responses in quick succession, full of snappy thrusts and counterthrusts. But Christensen allows her women to speak fully. A character might speak without a beat, without an interruption for half a page. The good part is that while we are really getting character out of this longish form of dialog, it is also punchy in a different way, funny or surprising. At the end of a long paragraph of Teddy’s dialog, she says that when she told Oscar what he himself was thinking that “was the equivalent of a blow job for him,” idea and a laughable surprise wrapped up together.
November 5, 2017
Loved the ironic title: as we come to understand the deceased artist from the points of view of those who loved him, we see how selfish he was, and how the women in his life transcended him. These women characters, with all their flaws and prickliness, are complete and engaging, and hence not entirely likeable--but you root for them. Through their reflections and interactions, the book looks at memory, trust, loyalty, family, race, and the contemporary art scene. Very urban. Also, a portrayal of romance and sex in maturity! The dialogue is so well done. Humor and surprises. Poignant portrayal of a mother who cares for her adult son who is autistic--an impenetrable witness/foil to all the drama.
June 10, 2018
Fascinating storytelling: the eponymous "Great Man" is dead before the story begins, and so the narration describes him through the interactions of four principle women in his life, plus a few ancillary characters (including a couple of wimpy men.) In a sense, the book follows the dissolution of bad feeling created by the Great Man's narcissism, and the recovery, by these four strong-minded women, of sanity and forgiveness. Really well told.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 17, 2017
Few writers can do complexity this well. Love the wealth of intricate, sarcastic, weary female characters.
August 14, 2025
I have no idea how this book ended up on my bookshelf, I don’t think I borrowed it from anyone, but recently picked it up, saw it was winner of the Penn Faulkner award, and read it out loud to Deanna.
I love this book, love it, love it, love it. Really great characters realistically developed, I’m not sure if there is an overarching plot but we get the story of the womanizing ass wipe painter Oscar Feldman, his wife, his mistress of 40 year , and several more interesting characters.
What is art?
If we have to ask that question we probably don’t have any idea.
I love this book, love it, love it, love it. Really great characters realistically developed, I’m not sure if there is an overarching plot but we get the story of the womanizing ass wipe painter Oscar Feldman, his wife, his mistress of 40 year , and several more interesting characters.
What is art?
If we have to ask that question we probably don’t have any idea.
July 15, 2018
Very well written, easy to read, with plenty to think about. Tells the stories around the great man himself. A perfect ending.
July 13, 2017
Loved the rich detail and different points of view. Very well written novel
April 23, 2013
I got the ref. for this book from NPR 3 books listings under the topic of ‘3 hell-raising heroines’. True to the description (‘Move on Barbie and chocolate-cooing, romantic, dreamy girls of Disney/mills & boon, Here comes the gutsy, ballsy, acid-pouring, confident heroine …')
The hell-raising heroine in this case is Claire st. cloud (Teddy) who is unashamed to be living as mistress of the great man (Oscar, jewish, female nudes painter, selfish, peccadillo, with insatiable carnal tastes like a big fucking dog). It is the charged language (to use a term Bellow uses for Martin Amis) Kate uses with great insights about love, man-woman and general new-york bohemian life style which makes it great read.
It has all the ingredients which heighten the reading pleasure i.e. racy, saucy, charged language, hell-raising heroine etc. There are quite a few dazzling displays of highly charged, raw and piercing sentences in the novel.
Book starts with obituary of the Oscar in new york times. Oscar had lived a life of full-fledged debauchery painting nudes, fornicating with his models or whoever he could get his brush on, openly two-timing (having a wifely Jewish wife with an autistic son) and a doting and non-interfering mistress Teddy (with whom he has two daughters). But he is pretty famous and gets away despite all his transgressions ( seducing a friend’s wife resulting in rocking their marriage boat and ultimately in suicide of the girl due to overdose.) Raping a nubile 18 yr old catholic girl, who is aspiring to be a nun, whom he lures into modeling and eventually forcefully seduces her.)
In many ways he is an ultimate lucky bastard who has two cakes which he always eats and several cupcakes on the side which he savors like a hungry, lusty dog along with his settled and permanent two rich cakes. While Abigail (wife) provides a marital security and a settled house to him. At the same time his mistress Teddy provides him her undivided attention, A tantalizing acidic talk and a luscious body with a torrid passion igniting the unstoppable flames of his fiery loins.
His elder sister Maxine is also a painter and a lesbian. She also tries to be in his good books. After his death, these three women (wife, sister, mistress) come together and squabble over the departed painter resulting in some messy verbal cat fights between them. These fights get more intense due to arrival of two biographers on the scene. One biographer is Henry Burke, a white guy with some experience in biography writing (he drones about the some failed but talented female poet whose biography he has written sometime back.) Other biographer is Ralph Washington, a black guy (grown up in some ny housing project ? ).
The hell-raising heroine in this case is Claire st. cloud (Teddy) who is unashamed to be living as mistress of the great man (Oscar, jewish, female nudes painter, selfish, peccadillo, with insatiable carnal tastes like a big fucking dog). It is the charged language (to use a term Bellow uses for Martin Amis) Kate uses with great insights about love, man-woman and general new-york bohemian life style which makes it great read.
It has all the ingredients which heighten the reading pleasure i.e. racy, saucy, charged language, hell-raising heroine etc. There are quite a few dazzling displays of highly charged, raw and piercing sentences in the novel.
Book starts with obituary of the Oscar in new york times. Oscar had lived a life of full-fledged debauchery painting nudes, fornicating with his models or whoever he could get his brush on, openly two-timing (having a wifely Jewish wife with an autistic son) and a doting and non-interfering mistress Teddy (with whom he has two daughters). But he is pretty famous and gets away despite all his transgressions ( seducing a friend’s wife resulting in rocking their marriage boat and ultimately in suicide of the girl due to overdose.) Raping a nubile 18 yr old catholic girl, who is aspiring to be a nun, whom he lures into modeling and eventually forcefully seduces her.)
In many ways he is an ultimate lucky bastard who has two cakes which he always eats and several cupcakes on the side which he savors like a hungry, lusty dog along with his settled and permanent two rich cakes. While Abigail (wife) provides a marital security and a settled house to him. At the same time his mistress Teddy provides him her undivided attention, A tantalizing acidic talk and a luscious body with a torrid passion igniting the unstoppable flames of his fiery loins.
His elder sister Maxine is also a painter and a lesbian. She also tries to be in his good books. After his death, these three women (wife, sister, mistress) come together and squabble over the departed painter resulting in some messy verbal cat fights between them. These fights get more intense due to arrival of two biographers on the scene. One biographer is Henry Burke, a white guy with some experience in biography writing (he drones about the some failed but talented female poet whose biography he has written sometime back.) Other biographer is Ralph Washington, a black guy (grown up in some ny housing project ? ).
October 5, 2009
Recommended to me by a very good friend, The Great Man by Kate Christensen was an enjoyable and quick read. A famous NYC painter who specializes in nudes, dies and leaves behind two families, that of his wife, and that of his mistress, and his famous but under-appreciated sister who is an abstract painter. When two different biographers come around to research the dead artist's life, old grudges and resentments rise to the surface and get aired. In the process, the reader has the opportunity to see through the eyes of four elderly women as they reminisce about past choices, critique the art world, and through the process of remembering the dead painter, becoming sexually reintegrated into the present moment in the winter of their lives. It is this last aspect of the narrative that I found the most believable and compelling; I don't think I will ever look at elderly women the same again. Like a fly on the gossip wall, I also enjoyed the portrayal of the NYC art scene and the author's imaginings into the mind of an artist as he/she attempts to realize a vision through their medium. The characters' discussions about art and poetry and how it related to a biographical life were engaging even if, at times, it felt like Christensen was showing off the spoils of her many cocktail party conversations in NYC.
By the end, however, the novel failed to convince me that the truth of the artist's life mattered more than the art that he left behind -- although I'm not sure if that was Christensen's argument. No matter what kind of sod/genius the artist may have been in his domestic life, his art--realized through the medium of women's bodies--still spoke to people in some kind of visceral way (or so they reported). I appreciated Christensen's attempt to juxtapose the enshrined "truth" about the women as depicted in the artist's painting, with the liv(ed/ing) truth of the women characters who were still alive to their bodies. I'm just not sure that she succeeded in arguing that this latter kind of truth is more important somehow than art's truth, the "Void" to which art points.
By the end, however, the novel failed to convince me that the truth of the artist's life mattered more than the art that he left behind -- although I'm not sure if that was Christensen's argument. No matter what kind of sod/genius the artist may have been in his domestic life, his art--realized through the medium of women's bodies--still spoke to people in some kind of visceral way (or so they reported). I appreciated Christensen's attempt to juxtapose the enshrined "truth" about the women as depicted in the artist's painting, with the liv(ed/ing) truth of the women characters who were still alive to their bodies. I'm just not sure that she succeeded in arguing that this latter kind of truth is more important somehow than art's truth, the "Void" to which art points.
September 27, 2008
OK, forget about all of the contradictions and inconsistencies regarding Teddy's garden and the time of year in NY. This book never moved out of "it's" own way.
Many readers raved about the characters being so well developed. Well developed characters are fantastic when there is more to the book: like an actual story.
So many times while reading this book I wanted to pull my hair out and I kept saying "Did I read that right?" So many things didn't make sense to me. Though this may sound ignorant or just downright dumb, do people in their late 70's and 80's really act like that? Talk like that? Have sex and boyfriends like that? I had a hard time believing Lila was in her 70's and getting in on w/ a younger man named Rex. I had a hard time believing Maxine (and yes, I know she's an old crotchety eccentric artist) would say some of the things she said (cunt?) The character Maxine didn't translate well to me.
Fast forward to approximately 3/4 of the way through the book when Abigail invited her husbands love child over to eat. Samantha refused the beer saying she'd love to drink it but couldn't because of breast feeding, then shes drinking it. Page 267 the exchange between Abigail and Samantha ends with Samantha "shook her head, surprised" WHY? Was surprised about? Didn't really make sense.
Another peeve of mine as I know it's also other readers peeve is when an author uses the same word or phrase over and over again. Abigail always said "gosh" which was a bit annoying, maybe that was her "word". Dyptech was thrown around quite a bit. A lot actually. It was thrown around a lot.
The epilogue was the only thing that seemed remotely like a story to me. And how extremely inconsequential to throw in Henry's affair w/ Ruby at the end. All of a sudden there was spark in the book. Henry was on the verge of vomitting over his secret. He had to tell someone. THE END.
PS-Note to whoever posted the topic "Is this book racist?"
NO....get a life. There was no rasicm whatsoever in this book.
Many readers raved about the characters being so well developed. Well developed characters are fantastic when there is more to the book: like an actual story.
So many times while reading this book I wanted to pull my hair out and I kept saying "Did I read that right?" So many things didn't make sense to me. Though this may sound ignorant or just downright dumb, do people in their late 70's and 80's really act like that? Talk like that? Have sex and boyfriends like that? I had a hard time believing Lila was in her 70's and getting in on w/ a younger man named Rex. I had a hard time believing Maxine (and yes, I know she's an old crotchety eccentric artist) would say some of the things she said (cunt?) The character Maxine didn't translate well to me.
Fast forward to approximately 3/4 of the way through the book when Abigail invited her husbands love child over to eat. Samantha refused the beer saying she'd love to drink it but couldn't because of breast feeding, then shes drinking it. Page 267 the exchange between Abigail and Samantha ends with Samantha "shook her head, surprised" WHY? Was surprised about? Didn't really make sense.
Another peeve of mine as I know it's also other readers peeve is when an author uses the same word or phrase over and over again. Abigail always said "gosh" which was a bit annoying, maybe that was her "word". Dyptech was thrown around quite a bit. A lot actually. It was thrown around a lot.
The epilogue was the only thing that seemed remotely like a story to me. And how extremely inconsequential to throw in Henry's affair w/ Ruby at the end. All of a sudden there was spark in the book. Henry was on the verge of vomitting over his secret. He had to tell someone. THE END.
PS-Note to whoever posted the topic "Is this book racist?"
NO....get a life. There was no rasicm whatsoever in this book.
March 30, 2012
The "great man" of the title of this book, painter Oscar Feldman, never actually appears except as a topic of other characters' conversations, since he's already dead when the novel opens. However, as we learn about him through the perspectives of the three very different women who were closest to him, I'm inclined to think we're probably getting a multi-faceted - if not necessarily objective - portrait of who he was.
Although the two writers who are simultaneously but independently working on posthumous biographies of Feldman are approaching their projects from different angles, they both need to rely on the same primary sources - Abigail, his widow; Maxine, his elder sister, also a well-known painter in a different style; and Claire "Teddy" St. Cloud, his attorney's secretary and Oscar's mistress for over forty years. None of these women are secrets to each other - but there is a secret that they've all agreed to keep, and which is potentially threatened by the biographical research in progress. A teaser rather than a spoiler: the secret does involve a body, sort of.
This is fundamentally the story of Oscar's women, despite the book's title, and I found them an engaging, if not always wholly likable, group. I don't often find myself reading novels in which the main characters are women in their seventies and eighties, and that was one element that kept me interested in The Great Man. Abigail, Teddy, Maxine, and Teddy's best friend Lila are all very vital older women - so much so that if the idea of senior-citizen sex makes you nervous, consider yourself warned.
The book is a PEN/Faulkner Award winner. Despite the highbrow connotations of its New York City art-world setting, it's not an intimidating read at all; I thought the writing was brisk and fairly witty, and the story seemed to move quickly. The characters were interesting and well-developed. It's a smart novel with satirical elements that I think give it a lighter feel than the author may have intended, but that lightness may be part of why I found reading it so enjoyable.
Although the two writers who are simultaneously but independently working on posthumous biographies of Feldman are approaching their projects from different angles, they both need to rely on the same primary sources - Abigail, his widow; Maxine, his elder sister, also a well-known painter in a different style; and Claire "Teddy" St. Cloud, his attorney's secretary and Oscar's mistress for over forty years. None of these women are secrets to each other - but there is a secret that they've all agreed to keep, and which is potentially threatened by the biographical research in progress. A teaser rather than a spoiler: the secret does involve a body, sort of.
This is fundamentally the story of Oscar's women, despite the book's title, and I found them an engaging, if not always wholly likable, group. I don't often find myself reading novels in which the main characters are women in their seventies and eighties, and that was one element that kept me interested in The Great Man. Abigail, Teddy, Maxine, and Teddy's best friend Lila are all very vital older women - so much so that if the idea of senior-citizen sex makes you nervous, consider yourself warned.
The book is a PEN/Faulkner Award winner. Despite the highbrow connotations of its New York City art-world setting, it's not an intimidating read at all; I thought the writing was brisk and fairly witty, and the story seemed to move quickly. The characters were interesting and well-developed. It's a smart novel with satirical elements that I think give it a lighter feel than the author may have intended, but that lightness may be part of why I found reading it so enjoyable.
October 1, 2008
I didn't like the way this book was written nor did I find the characters very well developed or perhaps I didn't connect to them as well as I could have.
I found Abigail, the wife of the "Great Man", to be one-dimensional, though it could be said that the husband not only cheated on his wife but that she cheated herself of a better life by being so complacent and understanding.
Maxine, the sister of Oscar, the "Great Man", I also found to be an abrasive character. Her mannerisms were uncompromising until the end of the novel, where all is revealled and she suddenly turns into a gift-giving angel.
I thought of all the women that the author could have expanded upon were Teddy, Oscar's mistress. Unlike Maxine, who was a celebrated artist, Teddy had what I thought was an artist's mercurial and intreging temperment.
I also disagree with other goodreads reviewers about the racism in the novel. I think the author was trying to create a diptych similiar to the two of the paintings under Oscar's name, Mercy and Helena in her characters of Henry and Ralph. Perhaps it was the author's attempt to create a complex parallel but I think she failed. Instead, she tried to sketch a weak parallel between the two paintings and writers yet because of its simple foundation she has opened herself to criticism which unfortunately is misdirected.
Besides my harsh character analysis though, I did find it interesting that the reader was able to derive so much about Oscar, whose presence was felt yet never physically embodied. His art and the women who survived him, as well as the biographies that were later written, all embodied his lifetime and character.
I especially love the quote about how the one that loves has more control and power than the one that is beloved and more needy for love and attention.
I don't know if I would recommend this novel but you should just read it for all the interesting views the author has on Love.
I found Abigail, the wife of the "Great Man", to be one-dimensional, though it could be said that the husband not only cheated on his wife but that she cheated herself of a better life by being so complacent and understanding.
Maxine, the sister of Oscar, the "Great Man", I also found to be an abrasive character. Her mannerisms were uncompromising until the end of the novel, where all is revealled and she suddenly turns into a gift-giving angel.
I thought of all the women that the author could have expanded upon were Teddy, Oscar's mistress. Unlike Maxine, who was a celebrated artist, Teddy had what I thought was an artist's mercurial and intreging temperment.
I also disagree with other goodreads reviewers about the racism in the novel. I think the author was trying to create a diptych similiar to the two of the paintings under Oscar's name, Mercy and Helena in her characters of Henry and Ralph. Perhaps it was the author's attempt to create a complex parallel but I think she failed. Instead, she tried to sketch a weak parallel between the two paintings and writers yet because of its simple foundation she has opened herself to criticism which unfortunately is misdirected.
Besides my harsh character analysis though, I did find it interesting that the reader was able to derive so much about Oscar, whose presence was felt yet never physically embodied. His art and the women who survived him, as well as the biographies that were later written, all embodied his lifetime and character.
I especially love the quote about how the one that loves has more control and power than the one that is beloved and more needy for love and attention.
I don't know if I would recommend this novel but you should just read it for all the interesting views the author has on Love.
September 9, 2008
I do not understand how this book won a writing award. I could understand an "Art World Issues in Contemporary Society" award or an "Awkward Discussions of Sex and Race" award or even a "Best Imitation of New York Times Articles" award but - writing?!? Really?!
There was so much analysis that seemed much more academic or literary than anything like real people do. It felt like the whole book consisted of "Why do you think this artist did what he did?" and "I'm not sure but I have this psychological theory about him" followed by "I think your theory is crazy, here's my theory that combines aesthetics with sociological factors."
Substitute "artist" for "biographer" or "mistress" or "mother" and I think you pretty much have the whole book.
Also, I was amazed at the sheer amount of "Do you remember when we would do this thing that helps set up the exposition for this story?" coupled with the "Yes, yes, that other thing we used to do that furthers the plot."
Not to mention the extremely awkward look at race.
All of which is a real shame, because I think there were some good ideas in this book. I'm glad someone is looking at gender and idolization in the art world. If this book were a little less concerned with the ideas and more concerned with the people, I might be singing a different tune. Or if it just gave up being a novel and became a Socratic dialogue instead.
I don't blame the author though. I blame her editor. How did s/he let her get away with this?There's a good book in here somewhere, but it would take a better literary archeologist than I to find it.
There was so much analysis that seemed much more academic or literary than anything like real people do. It felt like the whole book consisted of "Why do you think this artist did what he did?" and "I'm not sure but I have this psychological theory about him" followed by "I think your theory is crazy, here's my theory that combines aesthetics with sociological factors."
Substitute "artist" for "biographer" or "mistress" or "mother" and I think you pretty much have the whole book.
Also, I was amazed at the sheer amount of "Do you remember when we would do this thing that helps set up the exposition for this story?" coupled with the "Yes, yes, that other thing we used to do that furthers the plot."
Not to mention the extremely awkward look at race.
All of which is a real shame, because I think there were some good ideas in this book. I'm glad someone is looking at gender and idolization in the art world. If this book were a little less concerned with the ideas and more concerned with the people, I might be singing a different tune. Or if it just gave up being a novel and became a Socratic dialogue instead.
I don't blame the author though. I blame her editor. How did s/he let her get away with this?There's a good book in here somewhere, but it would take a better literary archeologist than I to find it.
November 10, 2012
A "Great" man is a great McGuffin. The great man (like George Kaplan in North by Northwest) doesn't appear in the novel. The great figurative painter, Oscar Feldman ("Feldman" the man in the field, like Cary Grant in the cornfield of NxNW?) has been dead for some years and the elderly women in his life are disturbed from their complacency when two biographers exhume his memory.
The real concern in this book is not the great man, of course. To me it is identity, self-realized or self-denied vs. what is realized by the world. The mistress (Teddy) and the wife (Abigail) both adored the painter but it is difficult to imagine that the painter saw much individuality in them. Like the abstract expressionists he professed to disdain, "Woman" for him was not the living, breathing human in front of him but an archetype he could only understand through his portraits. The women in his life understood this, but still went along with it for the auxiliary benefits.
The one woman who strikes out against this was the great man's sister, Maxine - the opposite of Oscar in just about every way conceivable (man vs. woman, brother vs. sister, abstract artist vs. figurative, introvert vs. extrovert, self-denying vs. self-aggrandizing). She called Oscar's bluff in a very illuminating way, and the book handles this comic skewering delightfully.
I have a thing for books that involve any of my past lives and this is one of the few that really get what a painter goes through, for that it definitely gets an extra star.
The real concern in this book is not the great man, of course. To me it is identity, self-realized or self-denied vs. what is realized by the world. The mistress (Teddy) and the wife (Abigail) both adored the painter but it is difficult to imagine that the painter saw much individuality in them. Like the abstract expressionists he professed to disdain, "Woman" for him was not the living, breathing human in front of him but an archetype he could only understand through his portraits. The women in his life understood this, but still went along with it for the auxiliary benefits.
The one woman who strikes out against this was the great man's sister, Maxine - the opposite of Oscar in just about every way conceivable (man vs. woman, brother vs. sister, abstract artist vs. figurative, introvert vs. extrovert, self-denying vs. self-aggrandizing). She called Oscar's bluff in a very illuminating way, and the book handles this comic skewering delightfully.
I have a thing for books that involve any of my past lives and this is one of the few that really get what a painter goes through, for that it definitely gets an extra star.
September 16, 2010
The Great Man is told from the perspective for four women, all in their golden years, whose lives are affected by the same man - Oscar Feldman: painter, genius, artist, manwhore - and the legacy he has left behind following his death, a couple years prior to when this novel takes place. There is Teddy, Oscar's long-time mistress, mother to his illegitimate twin daughters and aging sexpot (think Blanche Devereaux); Lila, Teddy's best friend and biggest admirer; Abigail, Oscar's widow and mother to his autistic son, Ethan; and Maxine, Oscar's older lesbian sister and abstract painter.
The novel is interesting in that it explores how one single man was able to get away with just about anything he wanted simply based on talent and charisma; and also how this one man profoundly affected the lives of the women around him. The author does fall victim to cliche, as the women are brought together as two biographers dredge up the past in their attempts to chronicle the great artist's life and, as a result, form a bonding friendship. However, the story still felt fresh and, at times, painfully awkward (eg: the, ahem, "elderly" love-making was something I found particularly difficult to picture in my mind's eye). Christensen's greatest accomplishment in this novel, I believe, is that she manages to develop four very likable female protagonists while still portraying the fragility and the flaws of the female ego. An interesting and entertaining read, for sure.
The novel is interesting in that it explores how one single man was able to get away with just about anything he wanted simply based on talent and charisma; and also how this one man profoundly affected the lives of the women around him. The author does fall victim to cliche, as the women are brought together as two biographers dredge up the past in their attempts to chronicle the great artist's life and, as a result, form a bonding friendship. However, the story still felt fresh and, at times, painfully awkward (eg: the, ahem, "elderly" love-making was something I found particularly difficult to picture in my mind's eye). Christensen's greatest accomplishment in this novel, I believe, is that she manages to develop four very likable female protagonists while still portraying the fragility and the flaws of the female ego. An interesting and entertaining read, for sure.
December 3, 2007
Ironically titled, this engaging novel concerns some of many women who centered their lives around a now-dead painter of the super masculine NYC art circles of the 50s and 60s -- his wife, Abigail, who has more or less confined her life to her apartment, where she cares for their profoundly autistic son; Teddy, his mistress of 40 years who spent most of her life cutting herself off emotionally from everyone else, including their twin daughters; Lila, Teddy's lifelong friend, who always harbored a crush on both of them; Maxine, his sister, a well-known abstract painter who perhaps never quite got the recognition she deserved.
Following his death, two young biographers start coming around asking questions, which prompts the expected reflection among these women, but which also leads to less-expected reconciliation, romance, and professional blossoming.
Christiansen does a good job of keeping these characters from being the sum of their somewhat contrived thumbnail descriptions (plump Jewish wife, soigne sophisticated shikse mistress, squat, mannish lesbian sister) and lets them blossom into rather interesting elderly women who are surprised to find that the chapters they thought had ended with The Great Man's death aren't quite done with yet -- they can still find romance, sexual satisfaction, friendship, and professional energy.
Following his death, two young biographers start coming around asking questions, which prompts the expected reflection among these women, but which also leads to less-expected reconciliation, romance, and professional blossoming.
Christiansen does a good job of keeping these characters from being the sum of their somewhat contrived thumbnail descriptions (plump Jewish wife, soigne sophisticated shikse mistress, squat, mannish lesbian sister) and lets them blossom into rather interesting elderly women who are surprised to find that the chapters they thought had ended with The Great Man's death aren't quite done with yet -- they can still find romance, sexual satisfaction, friendship, and professional energy.
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