Svetlana's Reads and Views

Name of Book: Exposed Author: Jean-Philippe Blondel, trans. Alison Anderson ISBN: 978-1-939931-67-2 Publisher: New Vessel Press Type of book: Painting, relationships, aging, artist, fame, family, moving on, France, friendship, model/artist relationships Year it was published: 2019 (original in 2018) Summary: A French teacher on the verge of retirement is invited to a glittering opening that showcases the artwork of his former student, who has since become a celebrated painter. This unexpected encounter leads to the older man posing for his portrait. Possibly in the nude. Such personal exposure at close range entails a strange and troubling pact between artist and sitter that prompts both to reevaluate their lives. Blondel, author of the hugely popular novel The 6:41 to Paris, evokes an intimacy of dangerous intensity in a tale marked by profound nostalgia and a reckoning with the past that allows its two characters to move ahead in to the future. Characters: M...

Name of Book: The 6:41 to Paris Author: Jean-Phillipe Blondell ISBN: 978-1-939931-26-9 Publisher: New Vessel Press Type of book: France, Paris, first love, reunion, train, lives, pride, modern times, chance meetings, connections, friendship Year it was published: 2013 (translated 2015) Summary: Cécile, a stylish forty-seven-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents in a provincial town southeast of Paris. By early Monday morning, she's exhausted. These trips back home are always stressful and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it's soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation thirty years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, their express train hurtles towards the French capital. Cécile and Philippe undertake their own face to face journey—In silence? What could they possibly say to one another?—with the re...