Art Fiction

This insightful collection of short stories takes the reader on a journey through a diverse array of lives and relationships, from a journalist finding new love after the death of her husband to a schoolgirl, shocked to discover her mother's secrets. D'Agincourt delves, deep into the emotional lives of her characters and sheds light on the mysteries of human decisions and the significance of art and music in our lives.

Maryann D'Agincourt's stunning novel in sketches follows Jocelyn from childhood to middle age, starting at the moment in her youth when she first hears the name of the mysterious Canadian painter, Alex Martaine, whispered by her parents. Each of them-Jocelyn, her art-loving mother, and her literary father-has a unique relationship with the artist, and he does, in ways the child could never imagine, turn each of their lives around.

Imagine writing a novel about a man named Jacob Printz who lost his purpose in life. Imagine describing the one constant in Jacob's life, the image of Seated Woman he first viewed as a much younger person, an image he comes back to over and over to make sense of the loves and losses in his life. This is the image by de Kooning that you, as the author, saw in the same museum several years before, an image that intrigues and haunts you, informing your determination to better describe, the world Jacob Printz inhabits, first with his sister Catherine and later with his lover Greta. As you near the end of writing Jacob Printz's story, you and your editor begin to search for an image of Jacob to grace the cover of your new novel. During a trip to London, you stumble on a print of Amedeo Modigliani's 1915 painting of the sculptor Henri Laurens. You show the print to your editor, and she agrees, "That's him." The novel edited, the cover design completed, you realize that de Kooning's Seated Woman has to be there too, and you and your editor find a place for her on the back cover. Only weeks prior to publication, you say to yourself, "I have to see the original Modigliani-I have to make sure he is Jacob Printz." You travel to Lucerne, Switzerland, to the Rosengart Collection to view the painting in person. "What if it is not right after all?" But, there it is-better than imagined: Portrait of Henri Laurens, sitting, 1915! And, what is beside it? Who knew? A sculpture of Seated Woman by the same Henri Laurens, the same man who is the subject of Amedeo Modigliani's painting, the same painting you have chosen for the cover of your novel Printz, a sculpture that is a near mirror image of the painting Seated Woman by de Kooning, which you have been pondering for several

The effects of World War II resonate through the lives of two families, one American and one European, living outside of Boston. As Jenny grows up in the shadow of her parents' dark experiences in Trieste during the war, she is pulled to the haunting art and ironic gaze of her next-door neighbor Jonas, whose own father, preparing for deployment as an army medic, died before he was born. But when, the mysterious Eric Stram enters her life unexpectedly, she learns how her parents' past is not behind them but will continue to push her life in unforeseen, and possibly unwanted, directions. From the author of Journal of Eva Morelli, this poignant tale of the echoes of the past and the complications of the present explores the tensions between duty to family, and the desires of the individual, and the striking way that art can draw disparate lives together.