What do you think?
Rate this book
Shadow-Box
A sweeping story of love, art, and boxing, this novel centers around the mysterious Arthur Cravan -- semiprofessional boxer, art critic, con man, nephew of Oscar Wilde. Cravan befriended Jack Johnson, the exiled black American boxer, in Paris; in 1916 they staged a fight to pay for Cravan's passage out of war-torn Europe. In New York, Cravan fell in love with the poet Mina Loy; they fled to Mexico and were married. Soon after, Cravan was lost at sea in a hurricane and presumed dead. In letters between Jack and Mina thirty years after Cravan's disappearance, Shadow-Box sketches this expansive tale in the era of tremendous social, artistic, and political upheaval before and during World War I.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
1 person is currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Antonia Logue
7 books2 followersAntonia Logue is an Irish novelist from Park, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. She grew up in Brussels, and was educated at Trinity College Dublin and Cambridge University.
Her first novel, Shadow-Box, won The Irish Times Literature Award for an Irish novel and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She has been a faculty member in Creative Writing at Oxford University, Columbia College, and the University of Chicago, and held fellowships at St John's College Cambridge, Wolfson College Cambridge, and CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) at Cambridge University.
She was named one of The Observer's 21 writers for the 21st century.
She is a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, Oxford. Logue lives in Richmond, South West London with her husband and two children.
(from Wikipedia)
Her first novel, Shadow-Box, won The Irish Times Literature Award for an Irish novel and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She has been a faculty member in Creative Writing at Oxford University, Columbia College, and the University of Chicago, and held fellowships at St John's College Cambridge, Wolfson College Cambridge, and CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) at Cambridge University.
She was named one of The Observer's 21 writers for the 21st century.
She is a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, Oxford. Logue lives in Richmond, South West London with her husband and two children.
(from Wikipedia)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 18, 2020
This is an epistolary novel which focuses on three real-life characters whose lives intersected. Mina Loy; poet artist, modernist, bohemian, futurist and much neglected thinker is one of the two main protagonists. The other is Jack Johnson, the first black world heavyweight champion. The link between them is the enigmatic Arthur Cravan (born Fabian Avenarius Lloyd). Cravan was Oscar Wilde’s nephew. He was known as a poet, boxer (he once fought Johnson), art critic, inventor of conceptual art (taken up by Duchamp), publisher (briefly) of a critical magazine and a lecturer (whose lectures were notoriously anarchistic and designed to shock). Loy and Cravan met in New York, both having left Europe because of the war. They fell in love and moved to Mexico as Cravan was avoiding the army. They planned to travel to South America. They married and the plan was for Loy to travel on a conventional liner whilst Cravan sailed himself. Unfortunately Craven set sail and was never heard of again, presumed lost in a heavy storm.
The premise of the novel is that thirty years later Cravan turns up and contacts Johnson. Johnson corresponds with Loy by letter and they go over their lives thirty years before. The letters are fairly long and of course, being epistolary there is no dialogue. This is the weakest part of the novel and can make it seem a little ponderous.
Its strength is the contrast between Loy and Johnson as they tell their stories. Loy tells of her unhappy marriage and life in Bohemia and some of the characters she met; futurism and her subsequent disenchantment with it. Her poetry was considered shocking in New York;
“I was denounced in Christian journals, in all the right-wing newspapers, slated as a harlot, without morals, shame, dignity or sense. It was magnificent […] Journalists came to interview me, to take pictures. I, they decided, was the personification of the daring Modern Woman. Mina Loy the Modernist. “
Loy charts her discarding of societal mores and her friendships with people like Marinetti (the futurist), Duchamp, William Carlos Williams and others. Johnson describes the brutality of his world, as a professional boxer when there were less rules, up to 45 rounds and where a black boxer as the world champion caused shock, anger and resentment. There are some brutal descriptions of prizefights, but also accounts of Johnson’s celebrity lifestyle.
Critics have been divided over Logue’s novel, but she is presenting two interesting and contrasting lifestyles told thirty years on and Conover has summed up the novel well;
“This novel, then, circles around the symbolic power of the body and the mechanics of grief. It demonstrates, then, that the modernist preoccupation with the narration of the individual’s experience of the sensual has resonance in contemporary fiction. Logue links childbirth, grief, love and the politics of race with her understanding of modernist aesthetics and the power of this novel lies in its visceral connection with the subject and the careful imagining of the desiring female subject.”
The contrasting lives works well. The focus on narrative rather than dialogue will not suit everyone. The elusive Arthur Cravan still seems an enigma. It is an interesting way of looking at a snapshot of the earlier twentieth century and at some of its fascinating characters
The premise of the novel is that thirty years later Cravan turns up and contacts Johnson. Johnson corresponds with Loy by letter and they go over their lives thirty years before. The letters are fairly long and of course, being epistolary there is no dialogue. This is the weakest part of the novel and can make it seem a little ponderous.
Its strength is the contrast between Loy and Johnson as they tell their stories. Loy tells of her unhappy marriage and life in Bohemia and some of the characters she met; futurism and her subsequent disenchantment with it. Her poetry was considered shocking in New York;
“I was denounced in Christian journals, in all the right-wing newspapers, slated as a harlot, without morals, shame, dignity or sense. It was magnificent […] Journalists came to interview me, to take pictures. I, they decided, was the personification of the daring Modern Woman. Mina Loy the Modernist. “
Loy charts her discarding of societal mores and her friendships with people like Marinetti (the futurist), Duchamp, William Carlos Williams and others. Johnson describes the brutality of his world, as a professional boxer when there were less rules, up to 45 rounds and where a black boxer as the world champion caused shock, anger and resentment. There are some brutal descriptions of prizefights, but also accounts of Johnson’s celebrity lifestyle.
Critics have been divided over Logue’s novel, but she is presenting two interesting and contrasting lifestyles told thirty years on and Conover has summed up the novel well;
“This novel, then, circles around the symbolic power of the body and the mechanics of grief. It demonstrates, then, that the modernist preoccupation with the narration of the individual’s experience of the sensual has resonance in contemporary fiction. Logue links childbirth, grief, love and the politics of race with her understanding of modernist aesthetics and the power of this novel lies in its visceral connection with the subject and the careful imagining of the desiring female subject.”
The contrasting lives works well. The focus on narrative rather than dialogue will not suit everyone. The elusive Arthur Cravan still seems an enigma. It is an interesting way of looking at a snapshot of the earlier twentieth century and at some of its fascinating characters
October 11, 2019
This is an epistolary novel which focuses on three real-life characters whose lives intersected. Mina Loy; poet artist, modernist, bohemian, futurist and much neglected thinker is one of the two main protagonists. The other is Jack Johnson, the first black world heavyweight champion. The link between them is the enigmatic Arthur Cravan (born Fabian Avenarius Lloyd). Cravan was Oscar Wilde’s nephew. He was known as a poet, boxer (he once fought Johnson), art critic, inventor of conceptual art (taken up by Duchamp), publisher (briefly) of a critical magazine and a lecturer (whose lectures were notoriously anarchistic and designed to shock). Loy and Cravan met in New York, both having left Europe because of the war. They fell in love and moved to Mexico as Cravan was avoiding the army. They planned to travel to South America. They married and the plan was for Loy to travel on a conventional liner whilst Cravan sailed himself. Unfortunately Craven set sail and was never heard of again, presumed lost in a heavy storm.
The premise of the novel is that thirty years later Cravan turns up and contacts Johnson. Johnson corresponds with Loy by letter and they go over their lives thirty years before. The letters are fairly long and of course, being epistolary there is no dialogue. This is the weakest part of the novel and can make it seem a little ponderous.
Its strength is the contrast between Loy and Johnson as they tell their stories. Loy tells of her unhappy marriage and life in Bohemia and some of the characters she met; futurism and her subsequent disenchantment with it. Her poetry was considered shocking in New York;
“I was denounced in Christian journals, in all the right-wing newspapers, slated as a harlot, without morals, shame, dignity or sense. It was magnificent […] Journalists came to interview me, to take pictures. I, they decided, was the personification of the daring Modern Woman. Mina Loy the Modernist. “
Loy charts her discarding of societal mores and her friendships with people like Marinetti (the futurist), Duchamp, William Carlos Williams and others. Johnson describes the brutality of his world, as a professional boxer when there were less rules, up to 45 rounds and where a black boxer as the world champion caused shock, anger and resentment. There are some brutal descriptions of prizefights, but also accounts of Johnson’s celebrity lifestyle.
Critics have been divided over Logue’s novel, but she is presenting two interesting and contrasting lifestyles told thirty years on and Conover has summed up the novel well;
“This novel, then, circles around the symbolic power of the body and the mechanics of grief. It demonstrates, then, that the modernist preoccupation with the narration of the individual’s experience of the sensual has resonance in contemporary fiction. Logue links childbirth, grief, love and the politics of race with her understanding of modernist aesthetics and the power of this novel lies in its visceral connection with the subject and the careful imagining of the desiring female subject.”
The contrasting lives works well. The focus on narrative rather than dialogue will not suit everyone. The elusive Arthur Cravan still seems an enigma. It is an interesting way of looking at a snapshot of the earlier twentieth century and at some of its fascinating characters
The premise of the novel is that thirty years later Cravan turns up and contacts Johnson. Johnson corresponds with Loy by letter and they go over their lives thirty years before. The letters are fairly long and of course, being epistolary there is no dialogue. This is the weakest part of the novel and can make it seem a little ponderous.
Its strength is the contrast between Loy and Johnson as they tell their stories. Loy tells of her unhappy marriage and life in Bohemia and some of the characters she met; futurism and her subsequent disenchantment with it. Her poetry was considered shocking in New York;
“I was denounced in Christian journals, in all the right-wing newspapers, slated as a harlot, without morals, shame, dignity or sense. It was magnificent […] Journalists came to interview me, to take pictures. I, they decided, was the personification of the daring Modern Woman. Mina Loy the Modernist. “
Loy charts her discarding of societal mores and her friendships with people like Marinetti (the futurist), Duchamp, William Carlos Williams and others. Johnson describes the brutality of his world, as a professional boxer when there were less rules, up to 45 rounds and where a black boxer as the world champion caused shock, anger and resentment. There are some brutal descriptions of prizefights, but also accounts of Johnson’s celebrity lifestyle.
Critics have been divided over Logue’s novel, but she is presenting two interesting and contrasting lifestyles told thirty years on and Conover has summed up the novel well;
“This novel, then, circles around the symbolic power of the body and the mechanics of grief. It demonstrates, then, that the modernist preoccupation with the narration of the individual’s experience of the sensual has resonance in contemporary fiction. Logue links childbirth, grief, love and the politics of race with her understanding of modernist aesthetics and the power of this novel lies in its visceral connection with the subject and the careful imagining of the desiring female subject.”
The contrasting lives works well. The focus on narrative rather than dialogue will not suit everyone. The elusive Arthur Cravan still seems an enigma. It is an interesting way of looking at a snapshot of the earlier twentieth century and at some of its fascinating characters
February 10, 2012
This sweeping narrative is framed in the form of a series of letters detailing the trajectories of three flamboyant lives. Mina Loy, Jack Johnson, and Arthur Craven all rebelled against the genteel restrictions of their day, which spanned the first half of the last century. AL has obviously done her homework, and her writing is vigorous and confident. If she has taken some liberties with history, she stays remarkably close to the documented facts,and her assumption of the persona of a famous black boxer is strong and rings true.
Shadow Box is ultimately a book about the fragile strength of connections and about overcoming obstacles, mainly racism, convention, and corruption. A good read, a gateway book even, very clever rather than brilliant, I recommend it.
Shadow Box is ultimately a book about the fragile strength of connections and about overcoming obstacles, mainly racism, convention, and corruption. A good read, a gateway book even, very clever rather than brilliant, I recommend it.
July 11, 2019
I randomly picked this book out not knowing what it was about. It is the story of Jack Johnson the first black man boxer to win the world heavy weight boxer championship. It is the story of his life, his fights, relationships and how he was so cruelly treated by the American people and government essentially because he was black. A well written novel told as letters between friends through the years.
Read
July 11, 2020I read much less than half before giving up. Perhaps if I hadn’t just read the biography of Mina Loy, I would’ve been able to stick with this. But the Jack Johnson endless recounting of boxing matches and the fictionalized versions of parts of Loy’s life I’d just read about wore me down.
March 8, 2018
Mina Loy should be a fascinating subject for a novel.This is not it.This is dull.
September 28, 2021
fictionalised (idk how much is fact) account of the love story between jack johnson (black heavyweight champion) and poet Mina Loy.
July 31, 2024
Loved it, particularly liked the historical context.
January 19, 2011
I struggled to get into this. It is written in the format of letters between two old friends who have recently made contact after years of not hearing from each other, but each chapter (purporting to be one letter) was simply a device to give a story. Every time I picked it up I found I had forgotten what I had previously read. In fact, I could forgot what I'd been reading by the time I'd put the book down. It was very heavy going and I gave up at page 89.
June 14, 2014
This book has stayed with me for such a long time. It weaves a haunting story around minor historical characters and their imagined and real relationships. Set in the early part of the twentieth century, it describes love lost, refound and lost again. The betrayals and triumphs of friendship. The missed opportunity and serendipitous chance. I really cannot reccomend it highly enough.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews