OPEN your mind to the subtle, softly nuanced expressions of the American antebellum mood circa 1950.
A German war orphan now named Michael transposed in body and in soul and doubting spirit to an American foster home shares his summers away from his "new" parents and with a fellow traveller on the pathway of emerging pubesance, the young Ritchie.
Spread in a rainbow sweep on this pallette of idylistic existence are the nouve beholders of the American Dream .
I initially thought that as much as the artist searching for the perfect light and sky, here was an authour searching for a plot to link together her characters.
I was joyfully wrong. The writer',s sketching of the continuum is as deft in artistry as any painter's brushstroke.
They were bold sweeps and delicate drawings
Both evocative and genteel, it is a story rich with an Amerian past that postdates the calamities of war but prequels the dissolving dream of the aftermath.
There are daubs of sexual jealously on this canvas of trust and denial as the painter's wife, bereft of her own esteem sees her famous husband "Mr Aitch" (never named but a fair take on Edward Hopper and his realism) drawn towards the summer visitors and especially Ritchie's ailing aunt Katherine.
There are also the edgings of dishonesty.
......look, in that sketch - who's that man and that woman on the porch,
" He made them up.
" You mean they don't exist?
" That's what artists do, Michael, we make thimgs up.
Oh, you mean you lie?......
Herin the enigma of The Lost Land: does the truth lie within oneself or is the life that is without, itself a misstatement?
All very deep, but the author has infinitely greater writing skills than this simple reviewer.
She should be read and enjoyed.
A German war orphan now named Michael transposed in body and in soul and doubting spirit to an American foster home shares his summers away from his "new" parents and with a fellow traveller on the pathway of emerging pubesance, the young Ritchie.
Spread in a rainbow sweep on this pallette of idylistic existence are the nouve beholders of the American Dream .
I initially thought that as much as the artist searching for the perfect light and sky, here was an authour searching for a plot to link together her characters.
I was joyfully wrong. The writer',s sketching of the continuum is as deft in artistry as any painter's brushstroke.
They were bold sweeps and delicate drawings
Both evocative and genteel, it is a story rich with an Amerian past that postdates the calamities of war but prequels the dissolving dream of the aftermath.
There are daubs of sexual jealously on this canvas of trust and denial as the painter's wife, bereft of her own esteem sees her famous husband "Mr Aitch" (never named but a fair take on Edward Hopper and his realism) drawn towards the summer visitors and especially Ritchie's ailing aunt Katherine.
There are also the edgings of dishonesty.
......look, in that sketch - who's that man and that woman on the porch,
" He made them up.
" You mean they don't exist?
" That's what artists do, Michael, we make thimgs up.
Oh, you mean you lie?......
Herin the enigma of The Lost Land: does the truth lie within oneself or is the life that is without, itself a misstatement?
All very deep, but the author has infinitely greater writing skills than this simple reviewer.
She should be read and enjoyed.