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Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman The: A Novel
Unavailable
Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman The: A Novel
Unavailable
Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman The: A Novel
Ebook524 pages6 hours

Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman The: A Novel

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this ebook

New York Times bestselling author Sena Jeter Naslund explores the artistic processes and lives of creative women in her groundbreaking literary opus The Fountain of St. James Court; or Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman.

Sena Jeter Naslund's inspiring novel-within-a-novel depicts the lives of both a fictional contemporary writer and a historic painter whose works now hang in the great museums of Europe and America.

The story opens at midnight beside a beautifully illumined fountain of Venus Rising from the Sea. Kathryn Callaghan has just finished her novel about painter Élisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, a survivor of the French Revolution hated for her sympathetic portraits of Marie Antoinette. Though still haunted by the story she has written, Kathryn must leave the eighteenth-century European world she has researched and made vivid in order to return to her own life as an American in 2012.

Naslund's spellbinding new novel presents the reader with an alternate version of The Artist: a woman of age who has created for herself, against enormous odds, a fulfilling life of thoroughly realized achievement.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateSep 17, 2013
ISBN9780062199454
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Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman The: A Novel
Author

Sena Jeter Naslund

Sena Jeter Naslund is a cofounder and program director of the Spalding University (Louisville) brief-residency MFA in Writing, where she edits The Louisville Review and Fleur-de-Lis Press. A winner of the Harper Lee Award and the Southeastern Library Association Fiction award, she is the author of eight previous works of fiction, including Ahab's Wife, a finalist for the Orange Prize. She recently retired from her position as Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Louisville.

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Reviews for Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman The

Rating: 3.3636363636363638 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Yuck. Got to page 60 or so and thought "no way am I going on!!" First of all it moved like frozen molasses and the character Katheryn was unlikable. The second book "Portrait..." was better but having to endure the "St james" part was torture. I chose this book because I live in Louisville and The Fountain of St James Court caught my eye as I love the art festival that is held there in early October. The writer is on staff at UofL and I thought I would support her. Too bad I chose a bomb.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I wanted to love this book (I teach Vigeé-LeBrun), but I only liked it. It seemed unfinished to me. Both stories, that of the novelist and that of the 18th century painter, Vigeé-LeBrun, felt incomplete. I know more about Old Louisville than I do about the two primary characters. Perhaps that's how Naslund planned it, but I was dissatisfied.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Do you ever wonder about artists, writers, musicians? Where do they find inspiration? What keeps them producing wondrous works year after year? How do they continually find inspiration in the ordinary world even as they go about their usual lives? What sparks creation? In Sena Jeter Naslund's newest novel, The Fountain of St. James Court or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman, she addresses these questions through fictional creation and modern day writer, Kathryn Callaghan, and a fictionalization of the life of celebrated French portraitist Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun, friend and artist to Marie Antoinette. The novel opens just after midnight with Kathryn cradling the just finished first draft of her novel about Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun to her chest as she crosses from her stately home on St. James Court, past the murmuring fountain in the middle of the court to her long-time good friend Leslie's new home, with the intention of leaving her new creation at Leslie's door. She is caught in the pride, perfection, and slight melancholy of having finished her latest work. And as she makes her way through the quiet and the dark, she reflects on the things in her past that have led to this moment of initial completion. Alternating with Kathryn's story is the slight novel she's written about the famous artist. Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun's passionate and artistic eye was encouraged from a young age and she became a very successful artist at a stunningly young age, entertaining and painting many from the French aristocracy. She was a devoted daughter, cleaving tightly to her mother and her brother after the untimely and devastating death of her father. She became a loyal wife to a challenging husband and a loving and permissive mother to her small daughter, Julie even as she persevered in her art, learning and growing and blossoming as an artist. Alternating between the two women's stories, the style of narration is quite different in the Fountain sections (Kathryn's) and the Portrait sections (Elisabeth's). Kathryn's story takes place over the course of one long day only and is very stream of consciousness. Moments of her day inspire her to reflect on her past, her three failed marriages, her son and his menacing former lover, and her friends. She looks around her at the beauty of the changing season and paints the place around her in words, her home with its furnishings, her yard and trees, and, of course, the background music of the fountain. She moves through her day in an unhurried, contemplative sort of way, wondering if a man she's interested in will in fact come to visit her as he's promised or if the promise of the day is already fulfilled enough by her finishing her manuscript. The sections centered on Elisabeth, the novel within a novel, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman, that Kathryn has written present most of Vigee-Le Brun's life from childhood, through her success as a painter and her escape from the horrors of the French Revolution, to her eventual return to France as an old woman immersed in the bucolic peace of her country home and the memories of her long life, her continued delight in light and painting, and her sorrowful love for her daughter. Both narratives are first person but those centered on Kathryn as she goes about her day are much more wandering and divergent than the more controlled, traditional sections centered on Elisabeth. Each woman speaks of the things that inspire her, the ways in which art, painted or written, is such a part of herself that she cannot abandon it no matter what is happening in her life or in the world around her, the way it saves her very concept of herself. Naslund has written beautifully and very visually in both sections of this character driven novel. The writing is considered and exquisite but somehow uneven in these two tales of artistic women growing older and reflecting on their pasts. The story of Elisabeth is fascinating but feels as if it skims lightly over so much while the meandering, stream of consciousness narration of the Kathryn portions doesn't really serve to help the reader know her as intimately as such a technique would suggest. Naslund is a gorgeous writer but these two narratives don't weave together in equal measure despite their similarity in theme and so the reader will favor one character over another, rushing through one piece of the story to get back to the other. Stunning imagery and interesting themes but a bit of a flat affect.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Well, renown author, Kathryn Callaghan, has finished the manuscript for the story of the French portraitist Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun and has given it to a friend, Leslie to read. Alternating between the story she has written and the story of her own life, the book becomes a mirror for an aging author and the subject of her book. Kathryn lives in Louisville, Kentucky and the Fountain of St. James is the focal point of her community, just as the exuberance of Paris before the Revolution was the focal point of Vitee-Le Brun's. As the lives of both women are revealed the reader discovers similarities in husbands and children, and personal dreams.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I won this book in exchange for an honest review.My honest review is that I didn't much care for this novel. I found this novel to be extremely slow. At about page 200 I had to ask myself, where is this story going? And at that point I decided I just could not put myself through the chore of finishing it. However, the author is able to demonstrate her writing capabilities in this novel; evoking images using strong and lush prose. Unfortunately that skill did not enhance the story itself. The historical part of the story was interesting and I found myself just skipping to those chapters. Slow moving, uninteresting characters (in the present time) and convoluted prose.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Twenty-four hours in the life of a 'pushing seventy' woman author, Kathryn Callaghan, beginning with when she leaves her latest completed novel at the door or a friend, living across the Court [Sections entitled "Fountain"]. This alternates with this novel: a French woman painter, Elizabeth Vigée-Le Brun who lived during and after the French Revolution [Sections entitled "Portrait"]. The novel consists of memories, musings, thoughts about neighbors. meetings with them and an ex-husband, and how imagination is used in creating literature and art. The Fountain symbolizes beauty. Several of the arts are mentioned in the course of the novel: besides the writer and the artist, Kathryn's son sculpts and Leslie, Kathryn's friend, plays the cello. Very slow-moving despite beautiful writing, which did become pretentious and overreaching at times. Much of it I skimmed after becoming impatient with it. The novel-within-a-novel was more interesting: about the artist's life, what inspired her in her art, and her connection to Marie Antoinette through painting her portrait. Very Virginia Woolfian and Proustian despite subtitle harking back to James Joyce. Lots of stream-of-consciousness, one thought leading to another, interspersed with meetings with neighbors. With me, a little stream-of-consciousness goes a very long way. The only 'action' per se was the unexpected visit of a former partner of Kathryn's son after the close of day.