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Loading... Paint It Black: A Novelby Janet Fitch
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I've never read grief so raw, so harsh, and so true. Every fear, every hate, every guilt, every rage...this book takes you through it all. The story itself was inconsequential. What mattered, and what will stick with me, is the emotion. It was dark. It was depressing. It was haunting. And yet at the very end, there was a spark, a chance. The end of zero and the beginning of one. Which is as real as it gets. (  )Alera | Apr 18, 2009 |   Set in Los Angeles during the punk rock scene of the 1980s, this novel features Josie Tyrell, a white-trash runaway who makes ends meet by working as an artist's model and occasional actress in student films. She begins dating and living with Michael Faraday, an aspiring artist who turns out to be the son of famous concert pianist Meredith Loewy and writer Calvin Faraday. When Michael commits suicide, Josie and Meredith are drawn together despite their obvious dislike of each other and their very different world views, each attempting to hold onto their version of Michael and to understand what prompted him to take his life. The book is filled with sex and drugs and shows how grief affects people in different ways. Very dark and vivid writing, but difficult going from an emotional standpoint and neither Josie nor Meredith is a particularly likable or sympathetic character. (  )ntempest | Apr 2, 2009 | I was a bit confused by some of the "punk" ideas and scene since that wasn't an area that I was ever exposed to or around. Reading more about the book now, after having read the book, certain things start to make a little more sense, knowing that the story is set in the 1980's, some story elements fall into place. However, it's not that I didn't care for the book but quite the opposite. I don't think I have ever read a book that described loss and grief in a way that touched me quite like this one did. I understand that the elements of creativity and death at times are so interwoven that it is difficult to separate the two. Add to the mix a story that is one part emotional thriller and one part psychological fiction and you have this story; while parts of it were difficult for me to stomach not physically but emotionally. (  )sunfi | Nov 1, 2008 | This is a great moving story. Fitch's prose is breathtaking. Looking forward to more from Fitch.... ( )AlbinoRhino | Sep 4, 2008 | A beautiful little pill. ( )whimsyblue | Jun 1, 2008 | 0.040 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0316182745, Hardcover)Following the huge success of White Oleander, where Janet Fitch portrayed the coming-of-age of Astrid, a young girl placed in foster care after her mother murders a former lover and goes to prison for life, she has once again created an indelible portrait of a young woman in Paint it Black. Josie Tyrell is a teenage runaway, an artist's model, and an habitué of the '80s LA punk rock scene. She is a white trash escapee from Bakersfield, having left a going nowhere life there. Now, sex, drugs and rock n' roll inform her days and nights. Paint it Black is the perfect title choice because Josie's lover is never coming back, as the song says.Josie meets Michael Faraday, son of concert pianist Meredith Loewy and writer Calvin Faraday, long divorced. He is everything that she is not: refined, wealthy, well-traveled, brilliant by fits and starts. He is also a Harvard dropout, leaving school so he can paint; his new obsession. He refuses help from his mother, who is furious about his decision to leave school, but it doesn't bother him to have Josie working three jobs to support them. He is given to black moods, frozen in amber by his perfectionism, contemptuous of those who do not agree with him about art and life. Josie adores him. One day much like any other, he leaves their house, saying that he is going to his mother's so that he can paint in solitude. Instead, he goes to a motel in 29 Palms and shoots himself in the head. What follows is days of watching Josie in a near fugue state from grief, drugs, booze, and going over and over her love for Michael, trying to grasp how he could do what he did. After all, didn't they share the "true world," Michael's characterization of their cocoon of love and exclusivity? Meredith calls her and says, "Why are you alive? What is the excuse for Josie Tyrell? I ask you." Ultimately, they form a tenuous relationship, because all that is left of Michael lives in the two women. Josie even lives with Meredith for a while. When Meredith is ready to go on tour again, she asks Josie to go to Europe with her. Before she can do that, she must go to 29 Palms and try to understand, finally, why Michael's depression pushed him over the edge. That puzzle is not solved, nor can it be, but the end of the story is a hopeful, upbeat, new beginning. Janet Fitch has beaten the curse of the sophomore slump with this dynamite second novel. --Valerie Ryan (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:54 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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