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A review by jacki_f
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith
3.0
This is a multi-layered story about a painter in 17th century Holland (Sara de Vos) and about the owner of one of her paintings in 20th century New York. Marty de Groot's family have owned the painting for 300 years, but one day he realises that it has been stolen and replaced with a replica. That forgery was painted by a young Australian art restorer called Ellie Shipley. Forty years later, Ellie will be curating an exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney, and both the original and the forged copy of the painting will be offered to the gallery. Hence the story moves between 17th century Holland, 1950s New York and Sydney in the year 2000.
I felt pretty ambivalent about this book. There were parts of it that flew past, but also parts that dragged. I enjoyed reading it, but it was also one of those books that I never felt the urge to pick up again or thought about when I wasn't reading it. I never felt invested in the characters. They were competently drawn but they failed to interest me. In fact, that's probably an apt way to summarise how I felt about the entire book: competently crafted, well written, but just not sufficiently interesting.
I felt pretty ambivalent about this book. There were parts of it that flew past, but also parts that dragged. I enjoyed reading it, but it was also one of those books that I never felt the urge to pick up again or thought about when I wasn't reading it. I never felt invested in the characters. They were competently drawn but they failed to interest me. In fact, that's probably an apt way to summarise how I felt about the entire book: competently crafted, well written, but just not sufficiently interesting.