Lydia Cassat Reading the Morning Paper

Lydia Cassatt, the older sister of the Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, died of Bright's Disease in Paris in November 1882. In this moving novel, the author has chosen five of Mary's paintings of Lydia and has woven around each one an exquisite chapter of their lives. The five paintings are reproduced in colour which gives the reader added pleasure for they are truly beautiful. There is, first, the Woman Reading in which Lydia holds the day's newspaper although she would much rather be rereading Madame Bovary. In another, she is holding a delicate china cup and behind her head are blue hyacinths, a gift from Degas. We see her in the garden, in the country and in a coach and suffer with her the strain of holding her arm or her neck in a certain position while longing to help her sister achieve yet another successful painting. In each episode, the process of painting and modelling is described: the choice of setting, the clothes, the colours and the light. Other figures move in and out of the scenes, some real, others alive only in Lydia's memory as she considers all that she must say goodbye to when she dies. For she knows she is dying. The family lives in Paris where Mary has a studio, and they are often visited by Degas who introduces a disturbing but perceptive element into their harmony. Exhibitions showing his works and those of other artists are vividly described as well as boutiques, cafes and colourful street scenes. The sheer wistfulness of a person who loves life and family and knows that others will carry on loving and working without her is sensitively portrayed as is the tender relationship between the two women. The last painting is the most poignant for it was created a very short time before her death. A lovely book. (Kirkus UK)