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Gwen
In 1903, the artist Gwendolen Mary John travels from London to France with her companion Dorelia. Surviving on their wits and Gwen’s raw talent, the young women walk from Calais to Paris. In the new century, the world is full of promise: it is time for Gwen to step out from the shadow of her overbearing brother Augustus and seek out the great painter and sculptor Auguste Rodin. It is time to be brave and visible, to love and be loved – and time perhaps to become a hero as the stain of anti-Semitism spreads across Europe.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
'startling and beautiful; a powerful tribute to a great painter'
Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife
'a ravishing achievement, a dazzling work of art in its own right’
Dominic Smith, author of the New York Times bestseller The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
'full of surprises, inspired sexual conjectures, moments of pathos and romance, illuminated by Goldbloom’s vivid imagination'
Michael Holroyd, author of Augustus John: The New Biography
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
'startling and beautiful; a powerful tribute to a great painter'
Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife
'a ravishing achievement, a dazzling work of art in its own right’
Dominic Smith, author of the New York Times bestseller The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
'full of surprises, inspired sexual conjectures, moments of pathos and romance, illuminated by Goldbloom’s vivid imagination'
Michael Holroyd, author of Augustus John: The New Biography
392 pages, Paperback
Published February 1, 2017
144 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 26, 2017
I find that books on artists tend to try to focus on their techniques, use of colours or the conflicts in the art world. I generally find them to be dreary to read. Not this one. This was almost a five star except for one aspect.
Based mainly in the first decade of the 2oth century, Jones is obsessed with being a great painter and a lover of Rodin. The book is a blend of the historical fact, the imagination of the author and the supernatural in portraying Gwen Jones' obsessions of love, art and, this is the strange part, of the Jewish Holocaust.
In seeing the events of the future of WWII and the Holocaust, I felt this second theme of the Jews diluted the main and wonderful tale of Gwen's other obsessions. But maybe the author used this theme to emphasis the sensitivity, intelligence and imagination of her subject. I am just not sure.
The writing is quite unique with a variety of styles, occasional change in narrators, use of letters, facts, and a haunting flow as Gwen wavers between reality and almost madness.
She has a strange incestuous relationship with her brother Augustus, who is described as bohemian and flamboyant. He is a right real cad. Augustus seems to be irresistible to women as he jumps into bed with his wife, sister, models, sweet heart or whoever happens to be around and available.
She also in obsessed with Dorelia who travels with her to France. She loses Dorelia to men and eventually to Augustus.
But the book main focus is on her long relationship with Rodin, first as a model then as a lover. Rodin is both a genius and a sexual predator. There is a number of sex scenes including one long erotic scene with Rodin and Gwen in a passionate threesome where Gwen is abashed and abused. Gwen wrote more than a thousand letters to Rodin and once discarded by him she became a stalker of him, never giving up her need to be loved by this father figure she is obsessed with.
There is so much in this book, some of the themes may not be for everyone, but the creativity of the author makes it one of the more memorable books I have read in 2017.
Based mainly in the first decade of the 2oth century, Jones is obsessed with being a great painter and a lover of Rodin. The book is a blend of the historical fact, the imagination of the author and the supernatural in portraying Gwen Jones' obsessions of love, art and, this is the strange part, of the Jewish Holocaust.
In seeing the events of the future of WWII and the Holocaust, I felt this second theme of the Jews diluted the main and wonderful tale of Gwen's other obsessions. But maybe the author used this theme to emphasis the sensitivity, intelligence and imagination of her subject. I am just not sure.
The writing is quite unique with a variety of styles, occasional change in narrators, use of letters, facts, and a haunting flow as Gwen wavers between reality and almost madness.
She has a strange incestuous relationship with her brother Augustus, who is described as bohemian and flamboyant. He is a right real cad. Augustus seems to be irresistible to women as he jumps into bed with his wife, sister, models, sweet heart or whoever happens to be around and available.
She also in obsessed with Dorelia who travels with her to France. She loses Dorelia to men and eventually to Augustus.
But the book main focus is on her long relationship with Rodin, first as a model then as a lover. Rodin is both a genius and a sexual predator. There is a number of sex scenes including one long erotic scene with Rodin and Gwen in a passionate threesome where Gwen is abashed and abused. Gwen wrote more than a thousand letters to Rodin and once discarded by him she became a stalker of him, never giving up her need to be loved by this father figure she is obsessed with.
There is so much in this book, some of the themes may not be for everyone, but the creativity of the author makes it one of the more memorable books I have read in 2017.
March 3, 2018
With the internet fading in and out, I've managed to finish my review of Goldie Goldbloom's fictionalised life of the artist Gwen John! https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/03/03/g...
May 2, 2021
I picked up this novel in a bargain bin outside my local newsagency, an Australian author I’d never heard of. Back home, I looked up Goldie Goldbloom on the Net and found out she presently teaches in Chicago and in her own words: ‘I'm married to a man, and have grown children and grandchildren, but all my life, I have identified as a lesbian. I live in a major Chassidic community, my husband's community'.
Now, you might expect such a singular biography to be reflected in the writing, and you would not be wrong. Gwen is an historical novel about Gwen John, sister of the famous British artist Augustus John, and a successful artist herself. She sees Auguste Rodin in a café in London and resolves to make a pilgrimage to Paris to meet and work with him. This she does with another aspiring artist, Dorelia. The girls take a boat to Bordeaux and, with many adventures, make their way north to Paris. Gwen considers herself lesbian and seduces Dorelia, however once both are in Paris, Dorelia runs off with a male artist and Gwen begins an affair with Rodin. Throughout, Gwen is haunted by a Jewish man that she keeps seeing but cannot track down. In Paris, she starts seeing Jewish children lining up, and, day-by-day, disappearing. Pretty quickly the reader twigs that Gwen has pre-vison, she is seeing these children and their parents in 1942, well after she has died, waiting to be deported to the death camps.
This is a pretty strange melange. Goldbloom wants to write about all the things she passionately cares about in the one work. Problems arise. Why is Gwen Johns ‘chosen’ to have these visions? All we are offered is: ‘She hadn’t asked for the children to appear to her, though she suspected that they did because she too understood what it meant to be invisible’. Gwen is invisible, presumably, because she is a female artist. But then why doesn’t she see blacks or gypsies, or even other female artists in her visions? Why Jews, with whom she has no ostensible connection whatever? Of course many women artists were invisible; although Gwen Johns had a public career Goldbloom is at pains to demonstrate that she was more talented than her more famous brother.
Now all men in this book are bad (save the poet Rilke), but some are considerably worse than others. Augustus John is portrayed as a bully, a violent rapist, and, more curiously, a mediocre artist. Can we accept this at face value? Rodin doesn’t come off much better. Goldbloom details Gwen’s artistic, personal and sexual abuse at the hands of the great sculptor (again, is this true?) climaxing, forgive me, in an embarrassing extended soft-core porn episode straight from ‘70s Penthouse or Norman Mailer on a bender. Gwen herself starts off as a feminist model but somehow goes seriously awry. But then as a fictional character, she rings true with all her faults and virtues and strivings and failures. She is, in fact, a wonderful creation, but so much else around her simply doesn’t add up. Yes, there are worlds we do not see, but different times do not exist together. If Golbloom wanted to incorporate all this stuff, perhaps she could have chosen a sort of gay Irene Nemirovsky. With the notable exception of the episode mentioned, most of the writing is strong and vivid, but too much is asked of it, and us. At odd times the novel does actually achieve a visionary intensity, but more often than it should be, it is just plain silly.
The historical settings and accompanying visual details are well wrought, enormous work and research has obviously gone into this, it has the feeling of a life’s project. The background almost has the density of a nineteenth century realist novel by Zola or Maupassant. One might perhaps gauge the extent of Goldbloom’s commitment to her work (putting the chutzpah back into chutzpah) by her giving herself a five star rating in the GoodReads review section (?!) Reading those reviews, this novel obviously struck a chord with many readers, and maybe I’m just being an old nark. But for me, any novel, wildly ambitious or not, needs to make its own case. Goldberg’s concerns: anti-Semitism, the erasure of talented women, the struggle for creative realisation; all laudable, all interesting, here fail to mesh into a coherent imaginative construct. Visibly, the author is dragging it all in and there is too much self-indulgence in the end result.
Now, you might expect such a singular biography to be reflected in the writing, and you would not be wrong. Gwen is an historical novel about Gwen John, sister of the famous British artist Augustus John, and a successful artist herself. She sees Auguste Rodin in a café in London and resolves to make a pilgrimage to Paris to meet and work with him. This she does with another aspiring artist, Dorelia. The girls take a boat to Bordeaux and, with many adventures, make their way north to Paris. Gwen considers herself lesbian and seduces Dorelia, however once both are in Paris, Dorelia runs off with a male artist and Gwen begins an affair with Rodin. Throughout, Gwen is haunted by a Jewish man that she keeps seeing but cannot track down. In Paris, she starts seeing Jewish children lining up, and, day-by-day, disappearing. Pretty quickly the reader twigs that Gwen has pre-vison, she is seeing these children and their parents in 1942, well after she has died, waiting to be deported to the death camps.
This is a pretty strange melange. Goldbloom wants to write about all the things she passionately cares about in the one work. Problems arise. Why is Gwen Johns ‘chosen’ to have these visions? All we are offered is: ‘She hadn’t asked for the children to appear to her, though she suspected that they did because she too understood what it meant to be invisible’. Gwen is invisible, presumably, because she is a female artist. But then why doesn’t she see blacks or gypsies, or even other female artists in her visions? Why Jews, with whom she has no ostensible connection whatever? Of course many women artists were invisible; although Gwen Johns had a public career Goldbloom is at pains to demonstrate that she was more talented than her more famous brother.
Now all men in this book are bad (save the poet Rilke), but some are considerably worse than others. Augustus John is portrayed as a bully, a violent rapist, and, more curiously, a mediocre artist. Can we accept this at face value? Rodin doesn’t come off much better. Goldbloom details Gwen’s artistic, personal and sexual abuse at the hands of the great sculptor (again, is this true?) climaxing, forgive me, in an embarrassing extended soft-core porn episode straight from ‘70s Penthouse or Norman Mailer on a bender. Gwen herself starts off as a feminist model but somehow goes seriously awry. But then as a fictional character, she rings true with all her faults and virtues and strivings and failures. She is, in fact, a wonderful creation, but so much else around her simply doesn’t add up. Yes, there are worlds we do not see, but different times do not exist together. If Golbloom wanted to incorporate all this stuff, perhaps she could have chosen a sort of gay Irene Nemirovsky. With the notable exception of the episode mentioned, most of the writing is strong and vivid, but too much is asked of it, and us. At odd times the novel does actually achieve a visionary intensity, but more often than it should be, it is just plain silly.
The historical settings and accompanying visual details are well wrought, enormous work and research has obviously gone into this, it has the feeling of a life’s project. The background almost has the density of a nineteenth century realist novel by Zola or Maupassant. One might perhaps gauge the extent of Goldbloom’s commitment to her work (putting the chutzpah back into chutzpah) by her giving herself a five star rating in the GoodReads review section (?!) Reading those reviews, this novel obviously struck a chord with many readers, and maybe I’m just being an old nark. But for me, any novel, wildly ambitious or not, needs to make its own case. Goldberg’s concerns: anti-Semitism, the erasure of talented women, the struggle for creative realisation; all laudable, all interesting, here fail to mesh into a coherent imaginative construct. Visibly, the author is dragging it all in and there is too much self-indulgence in the end result.
November 26, 2017
Gwendolyn Mary John was the sister of the painter Augustus John, and lover of Rodin. She was also a painter in her own right. And incidentally, a lover of her brother, and lover of her brother’s mistress. Such tangled webs she weaved. In 1903, Gwen set off to France on foot with Dorelia, who later betrayed her for a man, and then Augustus. This section of the book was my favourite, with descriptions of the French peasantry and countryside in the Langue D’Oc. Gwen as a character was also more assertive, in control of her journey, her relationships, and her aspirations, despite being troubled by an apparition of a Jewish man whose hair wrapped its tendrils around her. In the second part of the book, Gwen secures her ambition to model and learn from Rodin. But her artistic and independent spirit are usurped by ‘her master’, and she suffers a kind of sexual abuse victim Stockholm Syndrome, which made for difficult reading. However, the real victims of history are illuminated through a touching through-thread.
June 16, 2017
I kept coming back to this book and reading another section - and another - and another - and I just couldn't engage with it. I can't put my finger on what it was about the language or the story telling but what it was, I kept being pushed back out of the story.
October 20, 2017
At first I felt frustration and sadness. This story of a struggling young woman artist in 1905 demimonde Paris seems headed to moral or real disaster for all its characters. Yet in years of agony there are glimpses of ecstasy.
September 12, 2017
I tried to like this but it wasn't until the final few chapters that my interest was piqued. The dual timelines were fascinating but on the whole I found the characters unlikable.
October 21, 2017
A DNF. I was hoping for the journey across France, the artists perspective on Rodin etc. After 60 pages of incestrous relationships with the brother, justified by Gwen as being her fault - I'm sorry, the feminist in me can't tolerate the "I can't help but let myself get raped" bullsh*t - I gave up.
January 4, 2021
Wonderful writing that explores this artist's life and how it interesected with Rodin.
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January 23, 2024I really wanted to like this book because I loved The Paperbark Shoe, but I’m afraid I found it very hard to keep focussed…I guess the subject just didn’t interest me.
January 28, 2018
This is my new favourite book.
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September 27, 2018This is a fantastic book about Gwen John and Rodin. Gwen was a wild woman, both a survivor and a victim in a man's world. As an artist, I am inspired by her tenacity and saddened by her tragic love for Rodin. I am also shocked by Rodin's and Augustas Johns behaviour towards her and other women of which there is evidence to back up.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews