Iâm a British writer but I have lived in Norway for over twenty years. My yearning for history goes back as long as I can remember and I often feel trapped in the wrong time. Writing historical fiction is my way of delving into the past and bringing it back to life. Iâve always been creative and enjoyed arts and crafts and, as well as being a writer, I am also a creativity coach and have my own podcast,The Creatively You Show, which helps writers and artists deal with the emotional challenges of the creative process. My book choices reflect these interests and the broader themes of history and art.
This beautiful book is possibly the most important book of my writing career. I found it in a second-hand bookstore in Dublin on a rainy afternoon and, like the plot, I felt that my finding it was a stroke of providence. I was so moved by the story that I immediately signed up for a writing workshop with the author. That workshop was a defining moment in my life â after it, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Although this story is not directly about art, it shows how a manâs calling, his compulsion to paint, plays a key role in the lives and the destinies of others. The novel has a fairytale-like quality to it, a poetic timelessness that captures the essence of spirituality and love.
A classic love story and a seminal work of Irish literature that is a testament to romance, magic and the power of true love. With an introduction by actor John Hurt.
In love everything changes, and continues changing all the time. There is no stillness, no stopped clock of the heart in which the moment of happiness holds forever, but only the constant whirring forward motion of desire and need. . .
Nicholas Coughlan and Isabel Gore are meant for each other - they just don't know it yet. Though each has found both heartache and joy in the wildâŠ
Girl Reading is a highly creative and imaginative book. Superbly written, it takes the reader on a journey through time, and the vehicle for that journey is art. There are seven scenes from seven different time periods, each depicting an artist and a portrait of a girl or woman reading. It is such an original concept and itâs thoroughly absorbing. Given my fascination with history and art, I absolutely devoured it. Girl Readingwent on to play an important role in my own writing life. I was so impressed with it that when it came to sending my own book out to agents, I sent my manuscript to Katie Wardâs agent, who is now my own.
An orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena, and an artist's servant girl in seventeenth-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. A woman reading in a Shoreditch bar catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture, and a Victorian medium holds a book that she barely acknowledges while she waits for the exposure.
Trapped in her enormous, devout Catholic family in 1963, Annie creates a hilarious campaign of lies when the pope dies and their family friend, Cardinal Stefanucci, is unexpectedly on the shortlist to be elected the first American pope.
Driven to elevate her family to the holiest of holy rollers inâŠ
Although the obvious choice when considering a Tracy Chevalier novel about art would be Girl With a Pearl Earring, I found The Lady and The Unicorn to be equally as engaging. The story of how a tapestry comes to life is different to the story behind a painting. I enjoyed the way the novel is woven together like a tapestry itself through a number of different narratives, and that it has a common thread running through it in the character of Nicolas des Innocents, a womanizing artist. I also liked the way it provides a wonderful blend of fact and fiction that gives the reader a glimpse into 15th-century art and craftsmanship.
A tour de force of history and imagination, The Lady and the Unicorn is Tracy Chevalierâs answer to the mystery behind one of the art worldâs great masterpiecesâa set of bewitching medieval tapestries that hangs today in the Cluny Museum in Paris. They appear to portray the seduction of a unicorn, but the story behind their making is unknownâuntil now.
Paris, 1490. A shrewd French nobleman commissions six lavish tapestries celebrating his rising status at Court. He hires the charismatic, arrogant, sublimely talented Nicolas des Innocents to design them. Nicolas creates havoc among the women in the houseâmother and daughter,âŠ
The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde sits on my bookshelf like a literary Goliath and I dip into it from time to time for inspiration. Wilde is a master of prose and writes with incredible wit and agility. Replete with famous aphorisms, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a dark tale of art and life, of meaning and superficiality, of soul and conscience. What I love the most about this book is the constant references to art imitating life and vice-versa. This is a classic masterpiece, at times chilling, at times philosophical, and yet, as you can only expect from Oscar Wilde, consistently humorous.
'A triumph of execution ... one of the best narratives of the "double life" of a Victorian gentleman' Peter Ackroyd
Oscar Wilde's alluring novel of decadence and sin was a succes de scandale on publication. It follows Dorian Gray who, enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his depravity. This definitive edition includes a selection ofâŠ
Head West in 1865 with two life-long friends looking for adventure and who want to see the wilderness before it disappears. One is a wanderer; the other seeks a home he lost. The people they meet on their journey reflect the diverse events of this time periodâsettlers, adventure seekers, scientificâŠ
"Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour itâŠ.art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time".
This powerful novel, charting the life and career of the Russian composer Shostakovich (albeit a fictional account) reveals how artistic freedoms are stripped away under totalitarianism and what that does to an artistâs soul. It gives a chilling insight into the relationship between art and power, and the way a creative life is utterly compromised by the workings of a Communist regime. I found it a fascinating book as it showed me how creativity can still find a way to flourish even in the absence of artistic freedom.
A Daily Telegraph / Financial Times / Guardian / Sunday Times / The Times / New Statesman / Observer Book of the Year
'BARNES'S MASTERPIECE.' - OBSERVER
In May 1937 a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now. And few who are taken to the Big House ever return.
Summer 1893. Johanne Lien is a strawberry picker in the Norwegian town of à sgÄrdstrand. Attracted to the artists that flock to à sgÄrdstrand every summer, Johanne is especially drawn to the recluse Edvard Munch, rumoured to be a madman and a drunk. When Johanne becomes a maid for the wealthy Ihlen family, their wayward daughter Tullik recruits her as a go-between in her pursuit of the controversial painter. A secret romance develops, one that Johanne must help to conceal.
But Munch is a complex man who has a disturbing influence on Tullik and what begins as a flirtatious summer romance gradually descends into a darker struggle between two tortured souls, culminating in the agonising cry of The Scream, a painting that would change the world forever.
Disgraced British anthropologist Nigel Rowe hopes his YouTube adventure channel will be just the treat to redeem him, but vengeful treasure hunters have other plans! Seeking a legendary Jesuit mission in Baja, Nigel saves his producerâs life when the man takes a bullet meant for him.
Whatever happened to the young Carr heiress who vanished years ago? A scheming uncle with an eye on her fortune persuades a vaudeville performer to impersonate his niece in exchange for a share of the inheritance. Desperate for work, Jessie accepts the role and moves from the tawdry world ofâŠ