- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (May 25 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0312429665
- ISBN-13: 978-0312429669
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 14 x 2.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 340 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #735,709 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“[A] wildly imaginative debut . . . Lowry’s gift for poetic precision allows her to keep her cast fresh by providing constantly new insight into their oddities . . . The bold character work and beautiful prose are reason enough to keep reading.” —Publishers Weekly
“A sparkling, accomplished novel, written with finesse, each paragraph glowing with wit and the whole book alight with mischief.” —Hilary Mantel, author of Beyond Black and The Giant, O’Brien
“A sparkling, accomplished novel, written with finesse, each paragraph glowing with wit and the whole book alight with mischief.” —Hilary Mantel, author of Beyond Black and The Giant, O’Brien
“Thomas Lynch reveals himself to be a fabulous character in the great tradition of unreliable narrators, and Elizabeth Lowry weaves into the wonderful dark humor a genuinely moving tale.” —Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane and Alentejo Blue
“Ambitious and accomplished . . . Suffused with comedy and a mounting sense of loss . . . A mystery story, a love story and a comedy of errors set in that most familiar of locations—a ruinous country house—The Bellini Madonna is a compelling debut that entertains and unsettles in equal measure.” —Gregory Norminton, The Guardian
“An appropriately Jamesian atmosphere of ambiguity overhangs a plot whose complex strands are gathered in with an enviable expertise . . . Fusing the techniques of the thriller writer with those of historical fiction, Lowry . . . invokes an authentically Bellinian sense of distantly exact perspectives to create a first novel of genuine subtlety and distinction.” —Jonathan Keates, The Times Literary Supplement
“A complex narrative twists and turns back in time to Baedeker’s Italy . . . This is a first novel and Lowry has thrown a very considerable talent into it . . . Splendidly quirky.” —Jane Jakeman, The Independent
“This sparkling first novel is a treat for lovers of elegant mystery and exquisite prose . . . A delight.” —Kate Saunders, The Times (London)
“Ambitious and accomplished . . . Suffused with comedy and a mounting sense of loss . . . A mystery story, a love story and a comedy of errors set in that most familiar of locations—a ruinous country house—The Bellini Madonna is a compelling debut that entertains and unsettles in equal measure.” —Gregory Norminton, The Guardian
“An appropriately Jamesian atmosphere of ambiguity overhangs a plot whose complex strands are gathered in with an enviable expertise . . . Fusing the techniques of the thriller writer with those of historical fiction, Lowry . . . invokes an authentically Bellinian sense of distantly exact perspectives to create a first novel of genuine subtlety and distinction.” —Jonathan Keates, The Times Literary Supplement
“A complex narrative twists and turns back in time to Baedeker’s Italy . . . This is a first novel and Lowry has thrown a very considerable talent into it . . . Splendidly quirky.” —Jane Jakeman, The Independent
“This sparkling first novel is a treat for lovers of elegant mystery and exquisite prose . . . A delight.” —Kate Saunders, The Times (London)
“Lowry’s prose is vivid, and she is an accomplished wordsmith and storyteller. . . . Surprisingly hard to put down and strangely difficult to forget.” —The Boston Globe
“Entertaining. . . ‘The Bellini Madonna’ has a seductive style and a nasty edge, perfect for that long weekend in the country.” —The New York Times Book Review
“In this elegantly playful British debut, a self-loathing professor of fine art with an arch personal style narrates his quest for a missing Renaissance masterpiece. Lowry’s accomplished novel mixes history, sex, psychology and art, funneled through the florid character of Irish-born Thomas Lynch. . . Despite its comic streak, the book’s ultimate mood is tragic—gaining what he seeks leads Lynch to transformation but also to a fatal clarity. An ambitious, accomplished piece of work, part rococo amusement, part darker philosophical judgment.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Intriguing, and definitely accomplished. It is a debut novel, but doesn't feel like one at all. Smart, bold and surprising.” —Olivia Glazebrook, The Spectator
“. . . Inevitably recalls A.S.Byatt’s Possession but it’s a comparison from which this book does not always emerge the loser . . . She handles some dangerously clicheable material with a fine sense of when to twist it into something new . . . Lowry knows how to convey atmosphere almost as well as the former [Ian McEwan] and the relationships between characters significantly more capably than the latter [A.S.Byatt].” —Colin Burrow, The London Review of Books
Book Description
Thomas Lynch was once a brilliant young art historian. Now he is a disgraced, middle-aged art historian, overly fond of the bottle and of his fresh young students. But everything will change now that he's on the trail of a lost masterpiece, a legendary Madonna by the Italian master Giovanni Bellini.
Insinuating himself into the crumbling English manor house where the painting could be concealed, Lynch discovers that his search had just begun and he himself may be the pawn in a more elaborate game. A Victorian diary that draws Robert Browning into the complicated provenance might provide the key—if only Lynch can manage to beat his hosts in the search. Interlaced with complex clues and hidden jokes, "this sophisticated, parodic puzzle" (Booklist) reels from the lush English countryside to the sternly lovely hill towns of the Veneto, from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first.
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Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2.8 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Her Master's Voice, Oct 7 2009
By baroquemaniac - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Bellini Madonna (Hardcover)
At first, I thought that I had strayed into a novel by James Hamilton-Paterson (`Cooking with Fernet Branca' etc.), but I soon realized that Ms Lowry strove for much more than flippancy and was busy worshipping at the altar of a much grander deity called James, i.e., Henry James.Thus, the book comes with much that endears Henry James to some and makes him loathsome to others, i.e., exquisitely crafted, though at times enervatingly oblique or even pretentious prose and a plot that unfolds at the utmost leisure and at times seems to be more or less treading water. There is, of course, something very un-Jamesian about the generous helpings of sex; healthy reminders that we live in a age of fewer inhibitions; though I could well have done without another variation on the perennial evergreen of Roman catholic clerics abusing children.
And though I was soon aware that the epithet`thriller' used in one of the rave reviews on the blurb is wildly off the mark, I would have wished for something more of a surprise in the course of the book's denouement. On the other hand, the atmosphere of gloom and failure pervading the last pages is undeniably impressive.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Contrived, implausible, and far too long, Aug 8 2010
By RDG "Robert" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Bellini Madonna: A Novel (Paperback)
Set aside the impossible length of the book, the endless self-flagellation of the narrator, and his implausible failure to find the Bellini Madonna he set out to discover. Lowry never makes it clear just why he should hate himself as he does. The only possible answer is thrown in at the last minute -- unfair to readers who have waded through 300+ plus pages thinking the narrative is going somewhere.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Too much work to enjoy, Feb 23 2010
By Steven Thompson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Bellini Madonna (Hardcover)
A thoroughly unlikable protagonist visits an unlikable country estate inhabited by unlikable people, looking for a lost masterpiece. The prose is deft, but way too dense. Too much detail obscures the plot, making the reading a chore. All that work for a rather unpleasant story with an unsatisfying ending. Was quite glad to be done with it.
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