Reading as of Now:
I've just finished The Lost Mother by Anne Summers. Interesting topic, interesting themes, interesting painting: written however in a very un-interesting way. Journalistic style is not inherently a bad form - it's just when read over a book length work rather than an article it becomes dry, dreary and repetative. I very rarely skip any pages or even skim sections of books that I read, but I found myself doing just that.
Perhaps a decision to either focus on the memoir part of it or the investigative journo part might have made a stronger work - rather than a rather clunky blend of the two? Don't know. Hmmmm... also it would have been nicer to have more pictures. Describing paintings - even in detail is not the same as seeing even a grayscale reproduction. For what should have been a visual book as it was focused around Art and Painting - The Lost Mother had difficulty visually representing anything much more than the author's difficulty with the research - holed up in the State Library. As such it was a little self indulgent and doesn't quite live up to the hype and publicity it recieved. Well, the ideas and story do - just not the actual book.
Perhaps a decision to either focus on the memoir part of it or the investigative journo part might have made a stronger work - rather than a rather clunky blend of the two? Don't know. Hmmmm... also it would have been nicer to have more pictures. Describing paintings - even in detail is not the same as seeing even a grayscale reproduction. For what should have been a visual book as it was focused around Art and Painting - The Lost Mother had difficulty visually representing anything much more than the author's difficulty with the research - holed up in the State Library. As such it was a little self indulgent and doesn't quite live up to the hype and publicity it recieved. Well, the ideas and story do - just not the actual book.