This is Kelsey with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to
Check It Out. Today, I’m recommending The Art of Vanishing by Morgan Pager, a stunningly inventive and deeply moving love story that as Jodi Picoult says, “blurs the line between art and those who behold it.”
Jean’s life is the same day in and day out. Frozen in time by his painter father, the legendary Henri Matisse, Jean observes the ebb and flow of museum guests as they take in the works of his father and other masters. But his world takes a mesmerizing turn when Claire, a new museum employee, enters his life. Night after night, Claire moves through the gallery where Jean’s painting hangs, mopping the floors and talking softly to herself, while gazing at the masterpieces around her. The alluring man in the corner of the Matisse—is he watching her? Why does she feel a deepening pull to him, like he can see her truest self, her most profound secrets? Did he just move?!
In an extraordinary twist of fate, Claire discovers that she can step through the frame of Jean’s painting and into a bygone era, a lush snapshot of family life in France in the throes of the First World War. She and Jean begin a seemingly impossible affair, falling in love against the backdrop of the gallery’s other paintings come to life, which they can move through together and where Claire is seemingly the only outside visitor in possession of this gift.
But as their happiness is threatened by challenges both inside and outside the museum, Claire and Jean find themselves in a fight to preserve the love they’ve hardly dared to dream of. Will their extraordinary connection defy the confines of reality, or will the forces conspiring against them shatter their carefully curated happiness? Its emotional authenticity is top-notch and has kept this book in my thoughts long after the final page.
Check out The Art of Vanishing and other poignant works of fiction like it at
the Sioux City Public Library.
