Fake Like Me

I absolutely loved this novel. An artist who works in large scale paintings has all of her paintings for her biggest show yet destroyed in a fire. She is facing financial and professional ruin. She is allowed to borrow the studio of her former idol, sculpture Carey Logan, who drowned 3 years ago. The unnamed painter is under tremendous stress, and can't stop wondering about what really happened to Carey, even as she gets to know Carey's hotshot art world friends who all work at the same secluded retreat where Carey worked and died.

I adored the details of the narrator's artwork and background, as well as the art world she talks about. Her obsession with Carey makes sense when examined through class differences in the art world. The show more narrator remaining unnamed while focused on a larger than life woman gives out shades or Rebecca. This is the most exciting book I've read in a while. show less

Is It Art? Is It a Mystery?
Review of the Hachette Audio audiobook edition (June 18, 2019) published simultaneously with the Grand Central Publishing hardcover original

This reading was part of my investigation of the novels nominated for the 2020 Edgar Awards by the Mystery Writers of America. Fake Like Me is a nominee for Best Novel. The winners will be announced April 30, 2020.

For the longest time here I had to keep doing double takes to make sure that I was reading the correct book. I had picked up Fake Like Me due to it's Edgar nomination and I kept wondering: where is the crime? where is the mystery? It seemed like a struggling young artist story about someone trying to live up to her idols, and it was really well done but I show more couldn't see how it qualified for a crime fiction award. BUT, it gradually became clear and then in the last quarter or so it REALLY became clear. And it was excellent. There are hints of the macabre somewhat throughout due to some of the conceptual art and performance art and even grand guignol aspects, but the elements of fakery and conspiracy are only very gradually revealed. I can't say much more due to spoilers.

I think if you enjoy modern abstract / performance art especially and slowly revealed hints to subterfuge you will enjoy this as well. The actual physical work of painting has never been better portrayed in any other fiction that I have ever read. show less

I got a bit taken along with the hype about this book. To be fair to the book I probably shouldn't have read it as I had a feeling it wasn't going to be quite my thing.

Fake Like Me is the story of an unnamed painter. She is in awe of Pine City, the name for a group of five artists, and in particular she idolises Carey Logan, a sculptor turned performance artist, immortalised by her death at her peak.

We follow the painter as she embarks on her own career producing massive oil paintings, we follow her ups and downs, and then when one of those downs leads her to become involved with the remainder of Pine City, we witness her inadvertently filling the space that Carey left behind.

It's a fascinating story, made even more so by the twist in show more the tale towards the end, something I could never have guessed at in a million years. There is much to like about the whole thing in fact. I liked the characterisations, our heroine with her pink hair, the Pine City artists, her narcissistic friend from childhood, Max. The art scene is fascinating, not least the cost of the materials which left me reeling. And yet, somehow I was never completely convinced by this story, never completely embedded into the painter's story. She is quite introspective, quite careless with her skills and I felt like she sometimes needed a good shake. The story is fairly intense and for some reason it failed to keep me fully absorbed.

I read to the end, partly because I was taking part in the publisher's readalong, but also because I needed to know how the story ended, what would happen to the painter. Strangely though, I also didn't really care what happened to her until near the end when the twist is revealed. The first quarter and the last quarter are very good, the middle sections, for me, fell a bit short.

Maybe it's because I read it in sections over a few weeks, maybe it's because it's just not my cup of tea. I didn't hate it, far from it, I just was a bit 'take it or leave it' I suppose.

This is a book where very little happens apart from the narrator getting into calamitous situations and spending time with bright, young things. And yet, there is something quite compelling about it really. A strange combination! show less

When an artist loses her expensive artwork in a fire, she must remake her paintings in three months or lose everything. She takes up residence at Pine City, the isolated studios of a collective who influenced her own work. While lost in the dizzying pace of her own work, she begins investigating the death of the most prominent collective member, who supposedly died by suicide on film.
I love the pace of Barbara Bourland's storytelling, and the ending made me gasp, a delight that I haven't experienced in a while.

"This was fraud. This was wrong. I was a cheat. Above all else I was a liar."

This one was interesting. I don't know if the artists obsessed with another artist is an original plot, but this one felt pretty fresh and interesting. The demise of the art and the ultimate reason for her to rush 2 years work is way too few days was interesting and fast paced.

But I didn't enjoy the love story as much. The twist and turn, the on and off - it just felt.....frustrating and boring after a point. But I did find the art world interesting and I did like the story. The writing was really well done as well. All in all, it was good but I didn't love it

When the young aspiring painter arrives in New York to become a real artist, she encounters the already famous quintet that calls itself “Pine City“ after the place they work. Jes, Marlin, Jack, Tyler and especially Carey are the up-coming big names in the art world and all that the unnamed narrator dreams of: self-confident, relaxed, comfortable in themselves. A couple of years later, she is at the threshold of making herself a name when her apartment burns down and with it several pieces of work that were meant to be shown just a couple of weeks later. She had stored them at home, not at safe place as she tells her curator, thus, she has to act quickly and rebuild them. An impossible task, even more so if you do not even have a show more work place anymore. She luckily finds an interim solution: a friend brings her at the heart of the circle she once admired and which has been reduced to a quartet after Carey’s suicide. It was her especially that she looked up to and felt connected with. Maybe staying there might give her some insight in why she decided to end her life.

I really dived into the novel and was immediately hooked by Barbara Bourland’s novel. The young artist who is insecure and admires those who already succeeded. I also appreciated the insight in a painter’s work, how her emotions lead to results when she manages to channel them into the art. Interestingly also to glance behind the façade of the art and culture circus - you get the impression that it is just this: a façade, a cover-up to please, a pretence - without any solid foundation or walls. However, I got a bit lost when the plot developed too much into a love story.

I enjoyed the author’s style of writing and the combination of the art world with a touch of mystery. Yet, apart from the protagonist, it was hard to support the characters who were nor only shallow but pretentious and affected, and who took themselves and their work by far too serious. Just like the characters, the overall plot was also a bit trivial and lacked the depth and analysis or insight in the art work I had expected. The mystery surrounding the suicide of Carey, too, did not really show any suspense. An interesting read with a very strong beginning but a bit lengthy from the middle on. show less

She met her when she was nineteen, a fledging art student meeting Carey Logan, an artist part of a collective called Pine City. She admired her strange work, her notoriety, Carey was the in artist, Pine City the in group. Then she hears that Carey had stopped creating, turning instead to performance art, and then kills herself. Why did this happen? Our no name artist wants to know, wants to know obsessively. In time she gets her chance, after experiencing a tragedy of her own, and what she finds is so much more than she expected.

The avant garde art scene, I find it fascinating and something I will never personally experience. Those who create for their livlihood where so few actually make it. This is a study of those creators, but also show more of a young artist struggling for her own future and becoming enveloped in something she never expected. This is in parts strange, part mystery and part revelation. Our unnamed young artists backstory helps explain her insecurity and her intense quest for her own artistical recognition but also
her own search for self. It takes us deep inside the strange world of the rich and famous, of friendships that form and cement the participants in a course of action that could lose them everything they worked for. It was quite good, but felt the ending was the weakest part of the story. It did though, show us where our young artists future may possibly lie.

ARC from Netgalley. show less