Source: Review copy sent by the publisher, Magpie for the Random Things Blog Tour – thank you.
I always enjoy a good campus novel, and I also love novels with art as a driver. Lucien has both – so this book gets a double tick for starters!
Christopher Novotny is late arriving on his first day at Harvard. Eager to meet his roomate he hastens to his dorm, where Lucien is waiting for him.
He was tall and tanned, with long blond hair held back by a pair of sunglasses pushed up on top of his head. He had on skinny blue jeans and a white linen shirt open to the third button, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A cigarette was tucked behind one ear, his eyes a stark blue.
Lucien declares Chris dull and there are two many Chrisses around. He christens him ‘Atlas’. It’s ‘punch season’ at Harvard, and all the clubs are touting for new members. Lucien is able to get Atlas all the best invites, and they embark on a social whirl.
Chris is the son of immigrant parents from Prague, living in Maryland. His father died when he was two, his mother worked all the hours to provide for them both. Young Chris is a brilliant artist, and is lucky enough to be spotted by Marcus, a local art professor, who mentors him and lets him use his own studio. Marcus is instrumental in helping Chris get to Harvard on a scholarship.
Chris can’t afford to keep up with Lucien’s lavish lifestyle. When they are both acceoted into Harvard’s top dining club, ‘The Hasty Pudding Club’, he is shocked to final that the termly dues run into thousands of dollars, money he doesn’t have. Additionally, his mother is being sued for pre-existing charges on their rental back home, for which she needs $5000.
Lucien has a solution to all of this need for money. He’s seen how Chris is a oerfect copyist of the greats of the 20th century – Marcus had taught him to learn from them by analysing their methods, copying their work. Lucien says one little lost painting would solve all Chris’s money problems. It’s all too easy. Lucien fences the forgery at a New York gallery and problem solved.
Of course, having done it once, the temptation to do it again is just too much, and Lucien and Atlas find themselves playing a dangerous game, Lucien’s behaviour is also becoming erratic, he’s taking far too many drugs and drinking himself to oblivion. Cracks are appearing in his personality, or is it all a facade?
A Londoner, Thornton went to Harvard, so as an outsider from abroad is well placed to discuss the eccentricities of the punch season. He also spoke to a forger during his research and the art sections are expertly described. This is all built into an excellent art thriller and page-turning campus novel which I enjoyed very much indeed.
Source: Review copy – thank you. Magpie/Oneworld paperback original, 320 pages. BUY at Waterstones via my affiliate link.
