The Great Man

I bought this book a couple of years ago and could not get into it at first but on a recent trip, I couldn't put it down. I'm so glad I gave it a second chance.When two biographers set out to capture the essence of Oscar Feldman, the theme of this book is immediately apparent; the impossibility of truly capturing the essence of a life. Often the finished work reveals more about the observer than the subject. Oscar and his art are chosen and Christensen does not shy away from exploring reasons and processes that determine how one artist's work becomes elevated over another.This is an unlikely tale that explores who loves what, why and how. Oscar, the celebrated painter and ostensible center of the universe turns out to be far less fascinating than the many women who adore him. The women are complex, intriguing and old, which is interesting in itself. Some even have the temerity to actually enjoy sex, something I find refreshing, although at least one reviewer disagrees, reflecting society's distaste for the aging - especially women.Christensen's sense of fun shows in her stylish prose, as does her obvious familiarity with the art scene. Her love of food and detailed settings provide the perfect backdrop for this many charactered, and complex tale. Somehow she manages to keep all these balls in the air, yet I never had to go back to situate myself. I'm looking forward to reading more of her work.

I loved Kate Christensen's The Great Man, a graceful, smart and character-driven novel set in motion by the death of a renowned artist. The characters are the great man's widow and autistic son, his paramour (and mother of his two daughters), his sister (and fellow stellar artist), and others whose lifelong orbits around the titular character begin to decay rapidly away from the weaker gravity of his memory. In the resulting chaos there are collisions and near-misses and certainly damage is done. But when a dark secret about one of The Great Man's most famous works is revealed, it sparks a realignment of those other bodies into a new configuration that just might work. Spot-on dialogue, wonderful sense of place, lovely insights into what makes human life so interesting.

It was an ok read, not a great read but not an absolute waste of time either. It was primarily a character study and some of the characters were interesting. I enjoyed that it was written about and from the perspective of older women. Women who at the ends of their lives finally laid claim to their lives. It was fairly well written but every once in a while something discordant would be thrown in, leaving one with a kind of '...??er... what was that?' feeling. It was a decent book club book as it provided good fodder for discussion but not a stand out classic by any means.

The best thing about this intermittently funny and sweet novel is the accuracy of its portrayal of the ego driven, self-absorbed male artist at the center of the story. Having known plenty of painters like that I enjoyed the authors version. Oddly, the women in the story don’t come off as well, though I do enjoy the fact that geriatric Romance is portrayed with warmth and sensitivity. Totally worth reading.

I have been reading novels of manners and society - from Thackeray and Trollope through Fitzgerald and Wharton to the Marquands and Cheever for over fifty years; I've written eight myself and reviewed an innumerable number. I happened on The Great Man serendipitously. If AMZ permitted a ten-star rating I would hand one out to Kate Christensen's The Great Man. It is insightful, delightful, fluent and original - a book for grownups. The productions of better-connected, NYTBR "in crowd" writers like the Jonathans of Brooklyn,Claire Messud, Joshua Ferris and so on seem thin and pale by comparison. Since reading The Great Man, I have recommended it to any number of friends, women especially, of all ages; all have thanked me copiously.

This is very different from The Epicure's Lament which is fun romp. She does a fine job of contrasting the viewpoints of 'the great man' from the positions of his wife, long term mistress and sister. There is a bit of a contrived plot twist that brings these three women together but not too contrived. The portrait of the wife is probably the best as she starts out rather bland and develops into a complex and sympathetic figure.

Kate Christensen in my widely and well read opinion is simply...one of the best around. Her prose is intelligent, witty, courageous, edgy, and believable. Treat yourself. There is no disappointment to be had here. And I do hope it all went well for Ethan in the inevitable end.

A splendid novel about what happens to the lives of several women after the great man they loved (as wives, lovers, or daughters) dies. The great man in question was a painter, and so is one of the women he left behind. The story unfolds through the device of having two very different biographers approaching the various women in the great man's life in order to write about the deceased. Kate Christensen's take on male-female relationships, art, and what it means to be "great" make for very thoughtful and pleasurable reading.

A rather elegant novel about the fallout of the death of Oscar Feldman, an American painter whose sole subject was nudes (usually portraits of women who he'd slept with - or slept with after the portraits were painted). Shortly after Oscar's death, two would-be biographers turn up eager to write about his life and work. This has powerful consequences for the three main women in Oscar's life: his long-suffering widow Abigail, who has devoted her whole life to caring for the couple's autistic son; his stylish long-term mistress Claire 'Teddy' St Cloud, with whom Oscar had two daughters, and who is finding life without Oscar increasingly difficult, despite her independent spirit; and his sister Maxine, an abstract painter who always rather despised her brother's appetites and even his art. The novel traces the lives of these three women in the months after Oscar's biographies are announced. Teddy gradually faces up to her lost, forges closer relationships with her daughters and is offered the tantalizing possibility of a new relationship; Abigail, yearning for all those missed opportunities in her life, finds a potential 'son' figure in one of the young biographers; Maxine is forced to come clean about a big secret in her past, and to admit some of the feelings that she has been in denial about for so long. Meanwhile, Ralph, one of Oscar's biographers, realizes that Abigail's motherly offer will come at some cost, and Henry, the other, nervier and less confidant biographer, finds himself strangely attracted to one of Teddy's daughters.This is a much better and more elegantly written book than the other Kate Christensen ('Trouble') that I've read. Christensen brilliantly evokes both the New York art world and New York in general, and there are some delectable passages about food (one of her great loves). Oscar and Maxine both come across as very believable as artists, even if Oscar is at times in danger of sliding into a caricature (and if he wasn't very talented, how, as a naturalistic painter, did he fool so many people?). Maxine's gradual realization about what she really cares about was very moving, as was Abigail's warm feelings towards Ralph. And there were some interesting meditations on biography, all very well written.The only problem for me was that the novel took a long time to get going, and it felt that some areas of the book were not sufficiently explored. For example, if Oscar was a philandering fake, why was Teddy (irritating name by the way - why not just call her Claire?) so devoted to him? And wasn't she hurt that he left her nothing? Teddy's daughters were underdeveloped as characters, as was Maxine's Hungarian assistant - a pity as they were all interesting and likeable characters. I would have preferred more about them - and more about the characters' past - and less rambling about sex in the present day, which tended to happen rather a lot.Nevertheless, this was certainly a book where the positive aspects outweighed the negatives, and it's made me interested to explore more of this author's work, which I can't say I felt after 'Trouble'. A book that needs patience - but is full of rewards.