Venus, Vanishing: A Novel [9781250457233]

Overview

“Gripping, gorgeously written.” —Joanna Quinn, author of The Whalebone Theatre
“Extraordinary.” —Elizabeth O'Connor, author of Whale Fall
“Vivid...Asking what it means to make art in an emergency.” —Eleanor Catton, author of Birnam Wood and The Luminaries

Portrait of a Lady on Fire meets The Safekeep in this gripping debut that reckons with art forgery, desire, suspicion, and resistance

In raucous 1928 Berlin, Hannah Sherman has deviated from the traditional narrative arc of a woman’s life. After rejecting an arranged marriage, she leaves home to join the city’s underground art scene, reveling in its clubs and galleries with newfound friends and lovers. Working as a tailor while studying art in every spare moment, Hannah comes to know women and their bodies, first with measuring tape and silk, and later through sensuous layers of paint.

Hannah feels like she can finally call herself an artist when a wealthy female art collector commissions her to make an elaborate series of nude portraits. But after Hannah finishes the acclaimed Venus paintings, she discovers that her work is being tampered with and exhibited under a man’s name. When lines between artist and muse are crossed in an intoxicating but perilous affair, Hannah transforms her art into an act of revenge, finding herself caught up in a devastating game of survival.

Laced with queer desire and life-threatening secrets, Venus, Vanishing pulses with hedonism and danger as history comes to Hannah’s door, offering a textured and sweeping counter-narrative of Jewish survival, creativity, and resistance.