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37th out of 236 books
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331 voters
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Life Studies: Stories
With her richly textured novels Susan Vreeland has offered pioneering portraits of the artists life. Now, in a collection of profound wisdom and beauty, she explores the transcendent power of art through the eyes of ordinary people. Life Studies begins with historic tales that, rather than focusing directly on the great Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masters themsel...more
Paperback, 352 pages
Published
November 29th 2005
by Penguin (Non-Classics)
(first published 2004)
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Julia
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Recommends it for:
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book club
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literature-fiction
We just finished our book club meeting about these short stories, and we found them interesting since each is based on an artist or connected to art in some way.
However, the collection is uneven, with my individual scores for the stories ranging from 1 to 5. My favorite is the one about the daughter who is a potter and is dealing with her mother's slide into dementia. It brought me to tears and was the best of the bunch for me.
However, the early stories lacked central ch...more
However, the collection is uneven, with my individual scores for the stories ranging from 1 to 5. My favorite is the one about the daughter who is a potter and is dealing with her mother's slide into dementia. It brought me to tears and was the best of the bunch for me.
However, the early stories lacked central ch...more
Susan Vreeland is a beautiful writer and takes a very creative approach to her novels of great artists and their works. One of my favorite lines from this book: "How powerful a thing love is, that one loves past death, past regret, past all logic, and feels purified by that loving." ("Winter of Abandon") This book is a collection of short stories about different artists that are contemporaries (Renoir, Monet, Manet, Morisot, et al) and a look behind the scenes of some of the...more
Vreeland, whose Girl in Hyacinth Blue (1999) fictionalized the story behind a Vermeer painting, again blends fact and fiction to bring artists and the lives of those affected by them to life. She approaches her subjects, from Renoir to a young girl coming to terms with death, with emotional sensitivity and great humanity, revealing how they, too, survive daily life. With a wonderful eye for detail and thorough research, she recreates the Impressionist and post-Impressionist worlds. A few minor q
...more
This collection is divided into three sections. The first, which is comprised of a series of stories about the world's great painters, from Cezanne and Manet to Modigliani and Van Gogh, is enchanting and lovely. Imagined stories based on EXTENSIVE research with fictional characters mixed in with the real. They are fun and enticing little windows into the "maybe." The middle section is one story, an interlude, bridging the past and the perspective of the artists with the future/present ...more
I enjoyed this book of short stories about life and art. The book is divided into three sections--stories about people who interact in ordinary ways with great painters such as Monet, Manet, and Renoir; an folk-tale type story about 2 Italians who set out to see great art, and modern day stories about how art touches people lives.
I was impressed with how Vreeland made you feel like you were there for each story, and that the people were real and fresh.
I was impressed with how Vreeland made you feel like you were there for each story, and that the people were real and fresh.
I'm not really sure how I feel about this book - I approached it as if it were a novel and I was disappointed. If I started reading it with the expectations I hold for short stories (which is what this book was, if you really think about it) I think I would have enjoyed it more. However, I had a hard time following the story lines and the characters; it seemed very jumbled and I don't feel like there was a set beginning, middle and end. In the end I was left thinking, "was that it?"
I like Vreeland books because I like art. She always takes an artist or a painting and writes a work of fiction around it, including lots of art history. This one was a little different in that she wrote short stories about various artists from the perspective of another person in their lives, sometimes a family member and sometimes just a friend of employee. Having the artist be the minor character was unique and I enjoyed all the stories.
A story of painting and the painters who painted them, the readers of this novel (or collection of short stories that are clearly connected, if you will) are invited into the private dreams and lives of some of the impressionists. And that's just part 1. In part 2 we find ourselves in modern times, being treated to an insight into the way art can influence, for better or for worse, the everyday lives of our fellow citizens.
It's nice to read short stories sometimes. These all had a central theme.....art but coming at it from many different angles. The author used famous artists as well as creative children as characters in stories from the late 1800's Europe to the present day California. Some stories more memorable than others but fun to pick up a story and finish it before I fell asleep.
I hate short stories...but well, this book spoke to me on the shelf, so I grabbed it. It turns out, I do like SOME short stories. These stories revolve around the art world....either an artist is in the story OR a painting. I enjoyed the short stories and found it a great way to disappear off the couch....
This was a really interesting book. It is divided into three parts: the first part is like snapshots from historical artists' lives, the second part is a folk tale-type of story, and the third part is a collection of short stories showing how art affects different people differently. I do not normally enjoy books of short stories, but this was a nice, easy read.
A mixed bag of short stories, some were every bit as good as Luncheon of the Boating Party, but some fell short. I prefer her historical fiction to her stories set in the present.
Great stories from a great writer who must do research like a non fiction writer. she is a writing artist writing about art, artists,families,people..
Vreeland's gift for fictionalizing artists' lives and the revealing the impact of art on all of ourlives comes across in beautifully written stories.
This is collection of stories where artists are on the periphery of stories and not the protagonist. Interesting concept
This is wonderful book of short stories. If you have ever studied art you will really enjoy theses tales.
I liked some more than others - but overall very good and extremely readable. I prefer the novels, however.
Good book for the beach, don't worry if it gets sandy.
It wasn't a bad book but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. This is a book of short stories with none of them having any real point. Maybe I'm just not a fan of short stories...
June Pecchia
added it
Lovely vignettes.
When I first started listening to the audio version of this book, I didn't like it. The reader's voice grated on my nerves. But as I listened (flipping channels on the radio can only be done for so many miles), I began to enjoy the stories of the everyday people in the lives of famous artists. By everyday people, I mean Monet's gardener, the Manet families' wet nurse, the little boy who threw a stone at Cézanne... Through these stories, art and artists come to life, but as side characters.
I usually enjoy short stories but for some reason most of these seemed lacking to me. All the stories revolved around art or famous artists, which is a wonderful premise but it did not intrigue me as I thought it would. I enjoyed the "Now" stories more than those based on the real artists of the impressionist era. I felt I was missing something when I was not very familiar with their art. I would recommend this book to an art lover but for just a regular reader I would pass.
This collection of stories about art, love, and the transformative properties of both was a gift from a friend who absolutely loved it. Vreeland is adept at expressing the beauty of art, but the idea that art is worth all sacrifice was repeated a bit too often without challenge, aside from maybe the Nourrice story. I preferred the more modern stories, but would have enjoyed the entire collection more if there was more variation in theme and tone.
In the first half of the book, I found it interesting how the author took a small fact about an artist and spun a story about the people who may or may not have been in their life centering it on the isolated fact about the artist. In the second half, my favorite story was "In at least 500 words".
I have never been a huge fan of the short story, but since finding Susan Vreeland I am a changed woman. This collection of stories revolving around the affect that art has on its creators and appreciators are each unique in their tone and viewpoint. I love the details that obviously come from careful research as well as brilliant imagination. I am on the hunt for more of her work!
This book was good, but i found it a bit confusing at the beginning (audio book only). It was hard to differentiate when one short story ended and the other began. In the written book, i'm sure it's obvious by use of space. I also think it helps to know a bit about these artists before you read this book.
This book is a series of short stories with art and artists focused in them. It starts out great with some lovely, rich and charming stories. As the book goes on though, it seems to lose some of its magic and beauty. Some of the later stories did nothing for me at all.
I love collections of short stories along a theme. Life Studies has a section of short stories on 19th-century painters and another section on contemporary encounters with art. Loved Vreeland's style and the subject matter.
I am not usually a reader of short stories, but this was a winner. I don't know if you have to be an art lover to appreciate Vreeland's books, but it is hard to imagine one would get as much out of them.
I am a fan of Vreeland and her historical fiction about artist etc. These short stories did not disappoint. filled with art and artists famous and not and stories about their lives, losses, drives etc.
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Susan Vreeland is an internationally renowned best-selling author and three-time winner of the Theodor Geisel Award for Fiction, the San Diego Book Award’s highest honor. She is known for writing historical fiction on art-related themes, including Girl in Hyacinth Blue, The Passion of Artemisia, and Luncheon of the Boating Party (Penguin, 2007). Her books have been translated into 25 languages. Sh...more
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