Lust for Life by Irving Stone

The classic biographical novel about Vincent Van Gogh. Stone, in the end note, says that, aside from a few fictional scenes, "... the book is entirely true." He based his fictional account of Van Gogh's life on his letters, which were saved by his brother, Theo Van Gogh.

The facts may be true, but there is certainly a spin placed on the interpretation of those facts by the author. The novel spends most of it's time and energy on Van Gogh's early life - his failed love affair in England, his attempt to be an Evangelist, his early training as an artist. Throughout he is described as someone who takes a passionate love for something to an extreme.

The most interesting period of his life is his time in the south of France when he first had his "attacks" and when he had his most creative period. Sloan seems to say that Van Gogh's illness was epilepsy that started late in middle age, exacerbated by the absinthe that he drank and his years of near starvation.

If you've seen the excellent movie of the same title based on the book with Kirk Douglas then it's difficult not to picture Van Gogh as Kirk Douglas or vice versa!

The Headhunter's Daughter by Tamar Myers

At first I couldn't decide if this was intended to be drama, satire, or comedy. Now I think it is a clever combination of all three. It's the story of a white baby raised by black Africans in the Belgian Congo back in the 1950s. It's told with humor and satire combined with a keen sense of the different cultures - the author is the daughter of missionaries and spent time in the Congo as a child. Well done and insightful.

The Sojurn by Andrew Krivak

No happy ending here. But then it's a war novel, the Austrian/Italian front in WWI. The hero is a young US citizen, whose father took him back to Hungary as a child. He grows up herding sheep with his father, enlists, becomes a sniper for the Austrians, and has some horrific adventures before the war ends. His troubles don't end there, since he has to get "home". But where is home?

It's well written and captivating, if depressing. An interesting look at a forgotten front in a war that is fast receding from human memory.

Leaving Van Gogh by Carol Wallace

An interesting novel. An account of the last year or so of Van Gogh's life, told from the viewpoint of the doctor and art lover, Dr. Gachet, who befriended Vincent and Theo Van Gogh. The good doctor has problems of his own, and the book spends more time with his character as observer than with Van Gogh's. The author has remarkable insight into Van Gogh and his art, the the affect that his personality had on his brother Theo and Doctor Gachet. Highly recommended.

Adam Bede by George Eliot

George Eliot (aka Marian Evans) was so far ahead of her contemporaries. Her realist novels read as if they had been written a hundred years later. Of course, she skirts around some of the more difficult subjects in Adam Bede: the relations between Hetty and Arthur are only hinted at, and the murder of the child is related after the fact.

But her characterizations are so much more realistic than anything that Dickens produced it is hard to even draw a comparison. Pip seems a caricature next to Adam Bede. And all of Dickens' female characters lack the depth of a Hetty or even a Mrs. Poyser from Adam Bede.

An excellent novel, well worth reading again and again.

George Eliot: The Last Victorian by Kathryn Hughes

An excellent biography of a fascinating author. Mary Ann Evans, or Marian Evans, or Marian Lewes, or Marian Evans Lewes Cross, or George Eliot: the profusion of names gives you a hint of how complicated her life was. In a time when divorce was difficult (if not impossible), she lived happily with a married man for decades. Her life is as complex as the characters in her novels, and this biography deals with the details without obscuring the big picture.

After reading it, I wish that I had know her, which is the ultimate proof that this biography works.

Then Came the Evening by Brian Hart

A dark, somber, moody novel, but expertly written. It tells the tale of a shattered family: the father in prison for murder, the mother hitting rock bottom, the 20 year-old son never knowing his father. Things really get going when the father gets out of prison and the son attempts to bring the family together on the deceased grandparent's old ranch. But the father cannot change, the mother's guilt is overpowering, and the son grows away from them, forming new bonds.

What is disturbing is the cavalier attitude of the father toward murder. He is not a psychopath, or even even disturbed - he seems perfectly normal, yet thinks nothing of shooting a policeman, for instance.

Despite the dark tone, it is an excellent book, well written.