The Curiosities
A Novel
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The follow-up to Susan Gloss's successful debut, Vintage, is a charming mid-western story of artists, inspiration, and how to reinvent your life with purpose and flair.
Nell Parker has a PhD in Art History, a loving husband named Josh, and a Craftsman bungalow in Madison, WI. But her last pregnancy ended later in the second trimester, and rather than pausing to grieve, she pushes harder for testing and fertility treatments. Urging Nell to apply for jobs, Josh believes his wife needs something else to focus on other than a baby that may never be.
Finding a job turns out to be difficult for an art historian . . . until Nell sees the ad seeking a director for a new nonprofit called the Mansion Hill Artists' Colony. The colony is the brainchild of the late, unconventional society dame Betsy Barrett, who left behind her vast fortune and a killer collection of modern art to establish an artist-in-residency program to be run out of her lakeside mansion. The executor of Betsy's estate simply hands Nell a set of house keys and wishes her luck, leaving her to manage the mansion and the eccentric personalities of the artists who live there on her own.
Soon one of the artists, a young metal sculptor named Odin, is keeping the other residents awake with his late-night welding projects. Nell is pretty sure that Annie, a dreadlocked granny known for her avant garde performance pieces, is dealing drugs out of the basement "studio." Meanwhile Paige, an art student from the university, takes up residence in the third-floor turret, experimenting with new printing and design techniques, as well as leading a string of bad boyfriends upstairs when she stumbles home late at night.
Despite all the drama, Nell finds something akin to a family among the members of the creative community that she’s brought together. And when her attraction to Odin begins to heat up, Nell is forced to decide what will bring her greater joy—the creative, inspired world she's created, or the familiar but increasingly fragile one of her marriage.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gloss's memorable latest (after Vintage) takes place in an artists' colony, bringing to life its residents' challenges and achievements alike. Nell Parker, the new director of the colony in Madison, Wis., has been struggling with her husband after a lost pregnancy and failed attempts at fertility treatments. The directorship at Mansion Hill Artists' Colony was won by Nell on the strength of her PhD in art history, but she's uncertain about how she can help the three residents. They had already been chosen by Betsy Barrett, a wealthy philanthropist who recently died and left instructions that her mansion on the lake be used for the colony. Nell does her best to get acclimated with her new job while the artists focus on their projects, which are meant to be presented in a show at the end of their stay. They're a mixed lot, with multimedia artist Paige Jewell attending college in Madison while she lives at the colony and Odin Sorenson, arriving from Minneapolis, creating large metal pieces in the garage. Annie Beck, the oldest of the three (who achieved fame in the 1970s for her political art and activism), lives in the basement working with photography. It takes a while for the story to settle in, but the personalities and descriptions of artistic processes are skillfully portrayed. Gloss's novel is a transportive, satisfying portrait of an artists' colony.
