From Publishers Weekly
Cosmopolitan and elegiac, Just's 10th novel (after The Translator ) is full of subtle delights and rewards. Structured as a flashback, the story begins with an accidental meeting in Paris between expatriate painter Georgia Whyte and self-exiled novelist Harry Forrest. The two reminisce about their near-romantic connection years ago in Chicago, after which Harry begins to reflect on Georgia's life. And an interesting saga it is, beginning with the painter's initial artistic breakthrough in California and her experience of a menage a trois with a young SoCal couple devoted to surfing. The second half of the novel finds Georgia in Paris, where she delves deeply into her creativity and slowly falls in love with a jazz pianist. The damaged, fragile Georgia proves both a memorable character and an ideal vehicle for Just's musings on love, desire and art as he weaves together past and present with a master's touch, preserving a sense of surprise throughout. By rendering the California scenes with a touch of grit, Just keeps the rest of his narrative from becoming too mannered, and his well-drawn male characters add depth and dimension to Georgia's artistic and personal development. This is a wonderful change of pace for Just, whose main bailiwick to date has been political fiction; here his writing exhibits new dimensions.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Consummate political novelist Just turns his fictive eye on the arts here, and this story of Georgia Whyte, an artist true to herself and her work, is as vivid and haunting as a Hopper painting. Growing up in Chicago, Georgia learned to drink and to see to the heart of things-and she met Harry Forrest, her boyfriend's older brother and a fledgling author who becomes a touchstone for her. Fiercely concentrated on her painting, she finds the light too soft in Southern California and the atmosphere too hard in Chicago. But in indifferent Paris she carves out a routine for her work and finds love-and one day in the Musee d'Orsay she runs into her old friend Harry, a successful former writer of mystery novels who tells her story and envies her triumph. With splendid characterizations, crisp dialog, and gemlike scenes that invite reading for sheer pleasure, this is a literary treat. For all fiction collections.
--Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
