Crows over the Wheatfield

by Adam Braver

Driving home at dusk, Claire Andrews, an art history professor at a prestigious New England university, accidentally strikes and kills a boy who darts into the path of her car. She is immediately cleared of blame but is nonetheless left psychologically devastated. Haunted by the accident's consequences, Claire also wrestles with her study of one of Vincent van Gogh's final paintings, Crows over the Wheatfield, and its mysterious relationship to the great artist's untimely death.

Claire has been writing the definitive book on the connection between the artist's late paintings and his deteriorating mental condition before his suicide. She has uncovered evidence that the painter's death may not have been as it seems and that someone close to van Gogh may have pushed the fragile painter to take his own life. Meanwhile, Claire, too, begins to feel that she is being broken by despair. And when the boy's family files a high-profile lawsuit against Claire, even her work may not be able to pull her out of the darkness that has begun to envelop her.

On the advice of her lawyers and her husband, Richard, from whom she has recently separated but who has been caring for her, Claire sets off on a research trip to Auvers, France, where van Gogh spent his last days, determined to answer her questions about the artist and his masterpiece. While in Auvers, worrisome parallels between her life and that of the troubled painter begin to emerge, and Claire realizes that she must reconcile herself to her past in order to reunite the forces that make her whole.

Adam Braver, one of our finest young novelists, beautifully juxtaposes past and present in this remarkable story of art, tragedy, and redemption.

Genres: Fiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published May 23, 2006

About the author

ADAM BRAVER is the author of Mr. Lincolns Wars, Divine Sarah, Crows Over the Wheatfield, November 22, 1963, and Misfit . His books have been selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers program, Borders Original Voices series, and twice for the Book Sense list. His work has appeared in journals such as Daedalus, Ontario Review, Cimarron Review, Water-Stone Review, Harvard Review, Tin House, West Branch, and Post Road. He teaches at Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI, and at the NY State Summer Writers Institute."

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those novels where you groan throughout: “What is even the point of all of this? Why did the author even bother?” In a more skilled writer’s hands the initial setup – a driver accidentally hits a young boy who has skateboarded into her lane of traffic, killing him – might have potential (although, for me, no more than any other premise). But here the author strains to connect the driver’s situation, in which she is being blamed and shamed by the community and local media, with her nascent book about Van Gogh’s last days before his suicide, and his supposed last painting (1) Crows over the Wheatfield (actual real world title Wheatfield with Crows). The painting shows three paths, and driver/art history professor Claire might also have three paths she could follow in life.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to buy that Claire is “an art history professor at a prestigious New England university.” Her thoughts about art are so banal they might have come from a fortune cookie. When an American scientist visiting Auvers-sur-Oise tells her he has discovered that The Portrait of Dr. Gachet, which sold in 1990 for $82.5 million, is a fake (but swears her to secrecy), she swallows this whole and is ready to publish his findings in her book anonymously with zero investigation of her own.

When drivers attempt to drive drunk, we take away their keys. When writers come up with drivel like this, their laptops and pencils should be gently wrested from them:

Beethoven heard the notes in his head. [You mean, like every other composer?] Lucky enough to have the discordant music of the world inaccessible, the composer was able to string the notes purely and honestly. The music was no longer in reaction to, or even in battle with, the competing sound track of the world around him. It was music in its purest sense. Where the only sounds were the subtly modulating keys and the blending of harmonies. His own vision of love and hate. His own aural ideal. If there was one romantic notion that Claire still carried about Vincent, it was her vision of him being the visual equivalent of Beethoven.

This is literary fiction but there are many passages where the author (who is, naturally, a creative writing instructor) is trying too hard, and it comes out like a bad google-translation through three languages. Or the language is merely clumsy, awkward, or careless.

“The narrow winding streets of the medieval village had quickly given way to an agricultural age, where the crops dominated the land instead of the retail fronts that their fruits enabled” is a sentence crying out to be rewritten.

“It was as though she was stuck in a quaking field that rocked her back and forth in a strange exegesis on the morality of indecision and the finality of chance” is a sentence begging to be euthanized.

“The state of the world only further riled her, sickened by the helpless reality that the educated middle class will never rise from the ashes of elitist embers.” I don’t even know what idea is being attempted here.

“They walked single file along the well-tread path that was bombarded by puddles…” The correct tense would be well-trod. And puddles don’t bombard anything.

“She wore a simple knee-length skirt textured in wool, with a matching olive jacket, whose buttons crossed in a series along the front in the subtle understatement of a master designer’s hand.” Is the skirt wool? Textured in wool suggests something in wool atop, or combined with, something in another fabric. Surely the author means “textured wool,” and should just write that. The buttons crossed in a series? Can you even picture that? I sure can’t. Buttons are usually on one side, buttonholes on the other.

French homes are “constructed of old-world European elegance.” A building isn’t constructed of a quality.

A thin cotton sheet “issued a protective layer.” The sheet is the protective layer, it doesn’t issue a protective layer.

“Claire could see the soft brown hair, hanging slightly unstrung in the carelessness of the traveler.” Hair slightly unstrung? Is our hair strung on our head like Christmas lights, or is it actually rooted there?

“Vincent’s wheat fields on her left were invisible and unemotional in this hour.” At what hour are the wheat fields emotional?

Claire’s “legs balled up.” They formed balls? They tightened? Did she tuck them under her? A clerk “squinted behind the lenses, balling up his thin face…” Stop. I’m bawling in defeat.

There are also outright errors and strange word choices.

Claire is “trying to live with her guilty conscious…” – er, conscience.

“Did that actually role off her lips so easily?”

“…the ears of her dog peeked in attention to her movement…”

“Jack DiMallo play by the rules.” Plays?

“…all the others gawkers…”

A character is referred to both as “Paul Chambers” and “Paul Chamber.”

So many confusions of lay and lie: “…where Claire knew the cemetery lie.” “She would lay on her patterned quilt…” “…he must have been content to lay in the peaceful solitude…”

It’s Yale Law, not Yale law. Vellum is a type of parchment, not velum (which is a word but a different one). Pixilated when pixelated was meant.

“Even he must have been aware of the almost causal nature in which they discussed the case, as though this whole nightmare was something tangible that could be fixed by the righteousness of the law.” I think casual was meant?

“Bill Harrison had just left her a message checking in to make sure that he got her previous message, and to see if she had any thoughts on it.” You mean, she got his previous message.

At the end of the novel Claire’s husband, a professional illustrator, spends hours sketching something that he wakes her up in the middle of the night to see. He calls it “Claire as the Wheatfield” and it depicts her lying on the couch in her current injured state, with an injured leg going one direction, her arm another, and her body another, “a mass of strokes.” As with Van Gogh’s painting and its three paths, Claire’s body suggests three paths. “Beyond the theme, most fascinating was the technique. Through the riptide of structure, Richard brilliantly had alternated the force of his strokes to show the incongruity of rationality and irrationality.” In the sketch Claire has “piano-length fingers hanging down.” Her fingers are as long as a piano? Which size piano – upright, baby grand, grand, concert grand? Or are her fingers merely long enough to play a piano? Naturally, confronted with this ridiculous sketch and its explanation, Claire finds it brilliant.

And this isn’t a language issue, it’s just weird: “A framed seascape hung over the bed, thick in faded oils, with identically precise seagulls cresting the waves. It was for this very reason that she used to travel with small reproductions of masterworks, to temporarily cover the hotel pieces during her stays.”


(1) According to the Van Gogh Museum, “It is often claimed that this was his very last work. The menacing sky, the crows and the dead-end path are said to refer to the end of his life approaching. But that is just a persistent myth. In fact, he made several other works after this one.

Van Gogh did want his wheat fields under stormy skies to express 'sadness, extreme loneliness', but at the same time he wanted to show what he considered 'healthy and fortifying about the countryside'.”

[Davney Stahley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fini! an amazing book. Wonderfully written and thought-provoking, two personal "aha's" and much to contemplate. On dithering about taking a cab v. train v. bus, "The restless types...would simply climb into the nearest waiting taxi and hand over the 12 euros, believing that sometimes decadence is necessary to counter the weight of decision" (page 110). And, in discussing Van Gogh's suicide with a student, Claire Andrews, "You are suggesting that we allow one unexpected moment in a man's life to become the defining event in his history? Yes?...Now let's think about it: by letting a single mistake or accident live on to tell the tale of the life, we then discuss the value of life, and therefore miss the beauty of life" (page 122).

[Greta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rarely does a book touch on so much that is meaningful to me, places especially. Much of the story is thinking and feeling, less on incidents and conversations, legalities and culture. Slow to take shape until by accident, the narrative takes off.

[Ambrose Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am conflicted about how to rate this book. It is not a four star read, nor is it a three. There were little errors that easily distracted me. There was Claire talking to her husband on the phone, claiming she could hear the Red Line (the MBTA) running along down the tracks and and the ringing of Salvation Army bells in front of a store outside his window. The Red Line, as soon as it crosses the Charles River over the Longfellow Bridge, goes underground at Kendall Square. If Richard is doing work for Harvard, he’s in the wrong neighborhood, this is high tech and MIT. No department stores either. The name of the Van Gogh painting is not the name given in the title of the book. So, 3 3/4 stars. It was a pretty good story.

[Sara Van Dyck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dramatic set-up with a highly satisfying conclusion. Braver avoids cliches or melodrama and gives us a resolution based on character.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

See my review at https://topplingbookpile.wordpress.co...

[Anne Van · Rating 3 out of 5]

A parallel story of the aftermath of just about the worst thing that could happen to someone - killing a child with your car, with analysis about the last months of Vincent Van Gogh's life and art. This art historian is the central character, in fact the only one with more than a cursory description, but I still did not feel much flesh and blood. She suffers some grief and guilt about the child, but it mainly seems an annoyance that interferes with her life and work.

[Mary]

Clare, an art historian, is writing a book on the connection between Von Goh's late paintings and his deteriorating mental condition. When she accidently kills a young boy who skateboards in front of her car, worrisome parrellels between her life and that of Van Gogh begin to emerge.

[Eric_W]

Talk about confusing. I'm also reading Crows over A Wheatfield. Geez, folks. Let's get more imaginative with the titles.

[Lora · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was pretty good. The initial premise was interesting and made me think about how I would feel if something like that happened to me.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good insight into Vangogh's life

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting parallels illuminated between Van Gogh's last days and the unravelling of a scholar's life. A blend of fact, conspiracy and fiction.