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Lee & Elaine
Ann Rower’s forgotten turn-of-the-millennium classic that looks at the lives of Lee Krasner and Elaine de Kooning with obsessed, louche brilliance.
Maybe it was the car, the dangerous thrill of driving around, fast. I’m from the suburbs. I love driving, especially a red car, even a rental. Nothing is really mine. Maybe that’s what I love. Is that sick? I skidded a little, taking a turn too quick, looking at the water not the road. I knew the roads weren’t that safe. There had been many famous accidents out here. I almost did a Jackson—Jackson Pollock’s drunk car tree Saturday night death on this same road. But I was struggling to eat a muffin, not slugging from a pint like he must have been, while juggling his scared girlfriend and her terrified friend.
Separating from her long-term partner Jack and beginning a passionate affair with a much younger female student, the narrator of Lee and Elaine takes time off to write. Leaving Manhattan for an off-season Springs, East Hampton rental and haunting the Green River Cemetery where artistic giants of the mid-twentieth century are buried, she becomes obsessed with the lives and friendship of Lee Krasner and Elaine de Kooning, who were both artists and the wives of famous men. They were always so peripheral, she writes. Suddenly I wanted to find out about these women. Find them, period.
First published by Serpent’s Tail’s in 2002, the novel was republished as an ebook in 2013 by Emily Books. Written with Rower’s trademark louche and brilliant, mouthy, and deceptively casual style, it remains a forgotten classic of the turn of the millennium. With piercing and hilarious straightforwardness, the narrator turns the process of unearthing art-world gossip and tearing down her own life’s substructure into a searching and original examination of sexuality and friendship, art and ambition.
Maybe it was the car, the dangerous thrill of driving around, fast. I’m from the suburbs. I love driving, especially a red car, even a rental. Nothing is really mine. Maybe that’s what I love. Is that sick? I skidded a little, taking a turn too quick, looking at the water not the road. I knew the roads weren’t that safe. There had been many famous accidents out here. I almost did a Jackson—Jackson Pollock’s drunk car tree Saturday night death on this same road. But I was struggling to eat a muffin, not slugging from a pint like he must have been, while juggling his scared girlfriend and her terrified friend.
Separating from her long-term partner Jack and beginning a passionate affair with a much younger female student, the narrator of Lee and Elaine takes time off to write. Leaving Manhattan for an off-season Springs, East Hampton rental and haunting the Green River Cemetery where artistic giants of the mid-twentieth century are buried, she becomes obsessed with the lives and friendship of Lee Krasner and Elaine de Kooning, who were both artists and the wives of famous men. They were always so peripheral, she writes. Suddenly I wanted to find out about these women. Find them, period.
First published by Serpent’s Tail’s in 2002, the novel was republished as an ebook in 2013 by Emily Books. Written with Rower’s trademark louche and brilliant, mouthy, and deceptively casual style, it remains a forgotten classic of the turn of the millennium. With piercing and hilarious straightforwardness, the narrator turns the process of unearthing art-world gossip and tearing down her own life’s substructure into a searching and original examination of sexuality and friendship, art and ambition.
- GenresFictionContemporary
282 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 13, 2026
Picked this up on a whim on a visit to our favorite bookstore in Knoxville (shoutout to Union Ave for supplying all the hidden gems). Would have given the first half of this book 2-3 stars, but the second half really swept me off my feet.
To put it plainly, this book is a midlife exploration of sexuality facilitated by primary source research into the lives of two dead artists to whom the narrator has developed a parasocial relationship. A little exposition-heavy, but I really enjoyed it on the whole.
To put it plainly, this book is a midlife exploration of sexuality facilitated by primary source research into the lives of two dead artists to whom the narrator has developed a parasocial relationship. A little exposition-heavy, but I really enjoyed it on the whole.
April 27, 2026
i really liked this! it’s definitely not for everyone, but i love being stuck in ann’s head. also props for getting me into a piece of art history i knew nothing about.
May 22, 2026
enjoyable
June 16, 2015
Enjoyable!
was this book an autobiography somehow? (i guess not but however...)
it read like a romance of Jean-Luc Godard, but in a story frame of La Notte by Antonioni
was this book an autobiography somehow? (i guess not but however...)
it read like a romance of Jean-Luc Godard, but in a story frame of La Notte by Antonioni
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July 23, 2017It is kind of un-star-able.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews