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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
Beautiful descriptions and a colourful array of characters, including a painting that has plenty to say, this was surprisingly entertaining.
Don't let the cover fool you, this is not a girlie love story - it has much more to offer.
Graphic: Alcoholism, Fatphobia, Antisemitism
All that matters is that artists keep reminding mortals about what really matters: the wonder, the glory, the madness and the improbability of love.
This book tries to tell one hundred stories and it gets a little lost along the way, even though it is an interesting and entertaining read. The main "character" is a painting called The Improbability of Love which is found in an antiques shop and which assumes the role of the narrator in some parts of the book. While this is useful to relay details of the painting's creation and history, it gets a little silly because it (He) is so anthropomorphised: it speaks like a snobby man (think Stewie from Family Guy) and it can get a better look at its surroundings when propped in places (the painting tends to use all the human senses).
One problem I had with the book was the stark contrast between the characters. On the one hand, we have Annie McDee, a woman facing a major life crisis after her boyfriend and business partner kicked her out. She has to start all over again and still have to deal with an alcoholic mother, so she feels lonely and despairing. Perhaps the best, most heartfelt passages of this book are about Annie's plight. Her heartbreak is real. You get other serious characters, like Rebecca, Memling and Jesse, who go through ordeals, have moral debates and frailties. But on the other hand, the rest of the characters (and there are plenty) are mostly caricatures of eccentric socialites, russian billionaires, art experts, etc. This gives some humour to the story (for instance, the scene between the Prime Minister and the culture minister is hilarious, like a Yes, Prime Minister! sketch) but it doesn't lend much credibility to the rest. Or, at least, the contrast between the two character groups felt too large.
And then there were so many things I didn't understand in the last quarter of the book and they can all be considered spoilers.
Spoiler
When Annie gets arrested how does the police rely exclusively on the Winkleman's CCTV footage and not find sources of their own? Further on we learn that there is no footage of Annie leaving the shop with the painting - really? on the way home, through the market, no cameras picked her up? Are we supposed to believe the Winkleman's were able to eliminate all that evidence? Secondly, if the evidence against her was so big, how was she completely cleared after it was found out that Memling was a nazi? Couldn't she have robbed the painting anyway or was the story completely discredited because Memling lost his credibility? Is that how justice works? Maybe I am exceptionally thick but I didn't really understand why The Improbability of Love was a bigger threat to Memling's identity than all the other paintings he uncovered throughout the years from the nazi vault. If he was who he said he was, wouldn't it be natural that he owned the painting that was his parents'? Maybe I needed the author/narrator to go through these issues with me, very slowly...Finally, as I reached the end of the book, I realized the prologue was complete unnecessary, as we find the auctioneers in the last section of the book again and it ends up being a little repetitive. Despite my issues, mostly with the plot, I still enjoyed reading this and there were some wonderful passages about love and Art. This is probably a 3.5 rounded up.