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A review by nonabgo
Pictoriţa din Shanghai by Jennifer Cody Epstein
4.0
I had absolutely no idea who Pan Yuliang was before reading this book. My interest in modern painting is next to zero, I'm more of a classics aficionado, so I was not familiar with her work or existence. I looked her up after finishing the book and in truth, I was not impressed with her paintings at all. Of course, since it's not my cup of tea.
I do, however, love biographies, even romanticised ones, as this one is. Actually, "The Painter from Shanghai" is not so much a biography, but a novel based on the life of Pan Yuliang, a Chinese painter who, despite being an art revolutionary in her time, being one of the first Western-style painters in China, is known mostly for the fact that she was sold by her uncle and spent a few years in a brothel in her adolescence.
In fact, most of the book - maybe half - revolves around her early years in said brothel. Her entire life after that is crammed in the rest of the chapters, so the novel has an uneven feel to it - a little bit too slow, albeit colourful, in the beginning, and rushed in the second part, with entire chunks of time missing.
Do I mind this as much as I would in other novels? Weirdly, no, mainly because of the writing style. The novel is feminine, flowery and very accessible, despite the rather serious subject. This makes the book a rather easy summer read, but doesn't fall into "girly" because the heroine was such a symbol both in terms of her artistic style and as a sort of political figure, being a known associate of communist leaders.
What this book lacks, in my opinion, is a little bit more "meat" around Yuliang's stay in Paris. We have very few details about her time as a starving artist and I would have been interested to see a little bit more development in regards to the art scene of Paris, as well as the social and political environment that sent so many Chinese people to France during those times. Still, I quit enjoyed this novel. It's not as fluffy as to qualify as chick lit, but still quite readable and appropriate for what I call beach reading.
I do, however, love biographies, even romanticised ones, as this one is. Actually, "The Painter from Shanghai" is not so much a biography, but a novel based on the life of Pan Yuliang, a Chinese painter who, despite being an art revolutionary in her time, being one of the first Western-style painters in China, is known mostly for the fact that she was sold by her uncle and spent a few years in a brothel in her adolescence.
In fact, most of the book - maybe half - revolves around her early years in said brothel. Her entire life after that is crammed in the rest of the chapters, so the novel has an uneven feel to it - a little bit too slow, albeit colourful, in the beginning, and rushed in the second part, with entire chunks of time missing.
Do I mind this as much as I would in other novels? Weirdly, no, mainly because of the writing style. The novel is feminine, flowery and very accessible, despite the rather serious subject. This makes the book a rather easy summer read, but doesn't fall into "girly" because the heroine was such a symbol both in terms of her artistic style and as a sort of political figure, being a known associate of communist leaders.
What this book lacks, in my opinion, is a little bit more "meat" around Yuliang's stay in Paris. We have very few details about her time as a starving artist and I would have been interested to see a little bit more development in regards to the art scene of Paris, as well as the social and political environment that sent so many Chinese people to France during those times. Still, I quit enjoyed this novel. It's not as fluffy as to qualify as chick lit, but still quite readable and appropriate for what I call beach reading.