Andrew Winer

THE MARRIAGE ARTIST is very intellectual and literary, written in a wry, modern voice and dealing with some pretty heavy themes. It's sophisticated, complex, and makes use of an educated reader's full vocabulary. It's a novel for the type of person who reads magazines like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper's.

The novel cuts between two seemingly unrelated stories, which unite by the end of the novel. The first plot is about a successful art critic, Daniel, who discovers that his wife was having an affair with an artist whose work gained fame because of Daniel's glowing reviews. Daniel finds out about the affair when his wife, Aleksandra, and the artist, Benjamin Wind, commit suicide together. In the wake of this tragedy, Daniel must sift through the wreckage of his marriage and take a clear look at his failures as a husband for the first time.

The second plot follows a wealthy Viennese family in the years before and during World War II. They are assimilated Jews, converts to Christianity who contemplate their Jewish ancestry with shame. The focus here is Josef, who as a boy discovers that his great talent in life is a gift for creating the ketubah, the Jewish marriage contract, and imbuing the imagery in each new contract with the unique truth of a couple's love. It is a gift that becomes macabre once Josef is transported to Birkenau by the Nazis, where he continues to make ketubat for the other men in the concentration camp, men whose wives are surely dead, producing images that inextricably mix love and death, hope and despair.

It turns out that Josef is Benjamin Wind's grandfather; Joseph's wife did survive the Holocaust, and she made her way to America with their son. Wind and Josef's life are set in parallel: both are artists, and both produced glorious, tragic artwork in the months preceding their deaths by suicide. Daniel, in his quest to understand the suicide of Aleksandra and Wind, unravels the process by which Wind, the grandson of a concentration camp survivor, came to believe that he was an American Indian, not Jewish at all, and confronts issues of religion, identity, and love.

THE MARRIAGE ARTIST is very highbrow, but between all the references to obscure artistic movements and chatter about New York high society, it has a real beating heart. It's not facile or empty, and it ultimately offers an elegant, insightful look into the murkiest depths of the human heart. It's the kind of book that will get excellent reviews rather than excellent sales.… (plus d'informations)

From the very first sentence, the reader knows that The Marriage Artist is not going to be an easy or light-hearted read. Opening with the suicides, the reader is immediately plunged into the loss and doubt left behind for the survivors after such a death. Against this backdrop is a world unfamiliar to most readers, the art world in general and Jewish art in particular. To add even further complexity is the interwoven story of Josef Pick, which takes place in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. Taken separately, each individual story thread is beautiful in its own right but missing a key element which allows the reader to become truly vested in the story. Taken as a whole, The Marriage Artist is a stunningly ambitious novel that covers the entire range of human emotion and experiences.

Mr. Winer challenges the reader to the core by his almost animistic portrayal of human relationships. His use of crude, inflammatory language only serves to elicit the exact same sentiments as his characters, while simultaneously hinting at the bruised egos and true sentiments hiding underneath the crassness. It is a brilliant use of the language, as the reader is thrown back and forth across the spectrum of emotions with each sentence.

Neither Daniel nor Josef are easy to understand or to love. Both are cruel in their ability to withhold affection from those most in need of it. If a reader is willing and able to see through their crusty exterior, underneath their overt prickliness is a heart that bleeds with uncommon ease. The experience, if seen through to the end, is a rewarding one.

The Marriage Artist is a beautiful juxtaposition of the very best and very worst of humanity. Daniel's search to uncover the reasons for his wife's infidelity and suicide lead to the discovery of what it means to truly love someone and to absolutely lose everything. Mr. Winer uses his considerable writing talent to create in the reader simultaneous feelings of revulsion and utter heartbreak. Challenging and emotionally difficult to read, The Marriage Artist ultimately leaves the reader haunted by its brutality and poignancy.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to Picador Books and to Jen and Nicole from the Book Club for my review copy!… (plus d'informations)