The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild

Ever since launching Book Barmy, I read with a pen and index card, making notes and jotting page numbers to reference for this blog.  So I was surprised when halfway through this book I realized I hadn’t once picked up my pen.  That’s a testament to this wonderful debut novel — I read for pure enjoyment, immediately lost in its pages.

The Improbability of Love doesn’t fit neatly into a genre.  It’s a drama, a love story, a history novel, a mystery and a satire.  But mostly it is a book about art and the value of art both monetarily and emotionally.

Ms. Rothschild opens the book with a brilliant prologue which wryly captures behind the scenes at an art auction and then the cast of VIPs getting ready to bid on the art find of the century.

Then the novel goes back in time to Annie, a poor but accomplished chef who ducks into a secondhand store and buys a small, dusty painting which, unbeknownst to her, is an original Antoine Watteau, the French artist who revitalized the Baroque style of painting. 

And so it begins…

Soon there is a large cast of colorful characters surrounding her little painting — unsavory art dealers, arrogant art experts, narcissistic art patrons, eccentric artists, wildly wealthy Russians in exile, and Barty a cross-dressing little man who makes his living instructing the newly rich on how to fit into society. Hitler’s art squad and a hidden identity also come into play, which adds more layers of mystery and intrigue.

In several chapters, the author tells the story from the perspective of the painting itself – this technique is fascinating in the beginning but gets bogged down later in the book as the painting tries to delineate its provenance from his starving artist through royalty, war, and finally modern day obscurity.

I especially enjoyed the author’s characterization of the rich art patrons and their decadent and spoiled worlds:

“Poor Aunty Jo”, Emeline said with feeling.  “She never got over losing Topper.”

“I thought her husband was called Charles?”

“He was — Topper was her Pekinese.”

Annie secures a catering job for a Mrs. Appledore, one of the wealthy art patrons and with a “sky is the limit” budget recreates a dinner from art history. The description of the evening from decorating the dining room to the countless courses in this epic dinner is a wonder of descriptive food writing.

That said, Ms. Rothschild really shines with her knowledge of art history and her evocative descriptions of the art works, their history and the impact these paintings had on people’s lives.  She opens our eyes to the dirty underbelly of fine art – thievery, cheating and outright greed brought most of today’s fine works of art to museums around the world. But the reader senses the author’s overriding sense of love – love of artists, the patrons, the business of art and especially the beauty of art.

The Improbability of Love is a totally entertaining read — an accomplishment of wicked humor, counterbalanced with war crimes — outrageous conspicuous consumption, mirrored against the reverence and importance of art in all its many forms.

 

Thanks to my friend Michael for loaning me his copy of this book.