It's a novel partly based on the real life events about Pablo Picasso and his lover Dora Maar's time in Paris and the creation of hPicasso's masterpiece 'Guernica'.
It is a satisfying history/detective novel, it asks some hard questions on war and peace, art in the time of violence and conflicts and how Picasso and his then-lover and photographer Dora Maar chose to face the dark time of the Paris occupation by the Nazi Germany.
It seems to me the strong point of the story is how the author described/imagined the creation progression of 'Guernica' and the interactions among the different characters and how their different view on 'Guernica' and its meanings.
I'm not a history expert, so I can't tell you how accurate or not the plots are, but according to the author's afterword, all of the cast from the WWII timeline are historical figures expects two original characters inserted into the plotline.
However, I think the author's message of 'we all want peace!' expressed through the 2001 911 Attack plotline and the heroine's losing her husband during the attack is a bit too 'in your face' and shallow at times.
The story of Guernica alternates between the perspective of Yoko, a modern-day MoMA curator, and the perspective of Dora Maar, Picasso's mistress.
What does Guernica mean? What is art? What is war? Makes you think a lot.
It is a mixture of fiction and actual historical facts, and it is realistic and it is difficult to know how much of it is true.
I was curious about the breathtaking development and read it all at once. It is a work that reminds us that art is empowered by empathy with the artist.
Personally, this book was not in my taste. I admire the amount of research put into writing this book. The plot is closely back up with historical facts, and the author's passion for artwork is very clear. However, the main message - to create peace through art- felt a little cheap, and one-dimensional. Also, there are too many repeated phrases. I understand that Dora's nails are almost always "painted red" and that nobody likes the "dirty hands" of fascists. Overused words such as these become quite distracting after a while.