Sirens & Muses: A Novel
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Description
“Captures the ache-inducing quality of art and desire . . . a deeply relatable and profoundly enjoyable read, one drenched in prismatic color and light.”—Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of With Teeth
FINALIST FOR THE MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Glamour, PopSugar, Debutiful
It’s 2011: America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarefied bubble. Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. Complicating matters is Louisa’s unexpected attraction to her charismatic roommate, Karina Piontek, the preternaturally gifted but mercurial daughter of wealthy art collectors. Gradually, Louisa and Karina are drawn into an intense sensual and artistic relationship, one that forces them to confront their deepest desires and fears. But Karina also can’t shake her fascination with Preston Utley, a senior and anti-capitalist Internet provocateur, who is publicly feuding with visiting professor and political painter Robert Berger—a once-controversial figurehead seeking to regain relevance.
When Preston concocts an explosive hoax, the fates of all four artists are upended as each is unexpectedly thrust into the cutthroat New York art world. Now all must struggle to find new identities in art, in society, and among each other. In the process, they must find either their most authentic terms of life—of success, failure, and joy—or risk losing themselves altogether.
With a canny, critical eye, Sirens & Muses overturns notions of class, money, art, youth, and a generation’s fight to own their future.
Book Information
Posts
I loved this book even more than I expected to. It's a book about art and artists, about inspiration and success, about meaning and protest. About resistance against capitalismus and wanting to live from your art, of hating and becoming the establishment. Reading about two roommates in an art college yearning for each other and drawing each other in secret, of a student starting a fight against his teacher, of the different ways the lives of these characters are entangled and how they are all flawed in their own ways was great because it is done so well. I loved the whole atsmophere, the character buildings, but also how art was described and discussed.
Description
“Captures the ache-inducing quality of art and desire . . . a deeply relatable and profoundly enjoyable read, one drenched in prismatic color and light.”—Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of With Teeth
FINALIST FOR THE MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Glamour, PopSugar, Debutiful
It’s 2011: America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarefied bubble. Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. Complicating matters is Louisa’s unexpected attraction to her charismatic roommate, Karina Piontek, the preternaturally gifted but mercurial daughter of wealthy art collectors. Gradually, Louisa and Karina are drawn into an intense sensual and artistic relationship, one that forces them to confront their deepest desires and fears. But Karina also can’t shake her fascination with Preston Utley, a senior and anti-capitalist Internet provocateur, who is publicly feuding with visiting professor and political painter Robert Berger—a once-controversial figurehead seeking to regain relevance.
When Preston concocts an explosive hoax, the fates of all four artists are upended as each is unexpectedly thrust into the cutthroat New York art world. Now all must struggle to find new identities in art, in society, and among each other. In the process, they must find either their most authentic terms of life—of success, failure, and joy—or risk losing themselves altogether.
With a canny, critical eye, Sirens & Muses overturns notions of class, money, art, youth, and a generation’s fight to own their future.
Book Information
Posts
I loved this book even more than I expected to. It's a book about art and artists, about inspiration and success, about meaning and protest. About resistance against capitalismus and wanting to live from your art, of hating and becoming the establishment. Reading about two roommates in an art college yearning for each other and drawing each other in secret, of a student starting a fight against his teacher, of the different ways the lives of these characters are entangled and how they are all flawed in their own ways was great because it is done so well. I loved the whole atsmophere, the character buildings, but also how art was described and discussed.