The Tattoo Artist

June 13, 2005
Ciment's notable new novel (after Teeth of a Dog
) narrates the vanguard life of a New York surrealist artist whose 30 years among South Pacific natives teaches her the sacred art of tattooing. Born at the turn of the century to Jewish immigrants, freethinking Sara escapes her seamstress job via Philip Ehrenreich, a banker's son turned Marxist revolutionary who moves her into his Greenwich Village flat and introduces her to the New York art scene. They make a fabulous avant-garde couple until the New York art world goes bust in the run-up to WWII, and they take off for the South Seas in search of native art. Marooned on the island of Tu'un'uu, the castaways find their love tested when the natives forcibly tattoo their faces. Eventually, with no hope of escape, tattooing each other with the gorgeous dyes becomes a mournful expression of love and loss. After Philip's untimely death, Sara becomes an elder craftsman of the religious art, rendering herself "a piece of living tapestry." Three decades later Sara returns to New York after a roving Life
magazine reporter discovers her on the island and photographs her, revealing her curious life's work to the world. Though historically fantastic, Ciment's latest is poignant and anthropologically intriguing.

Starred review from July 15, 2005
A tattoo artist brings to mind a young man in a slightly seedy shop on the wrong side of town, but Ciment's heroine, Sara Ehrenreich, is far removed from that vision. Born to Jewish immigrants at the turn of the last century, Sara is an avant-garde artist in 1920s New York who marries Philip, a disaffected anarchist. Financial need and a taste for adventure compel them to accept a commission to voyage to the South Sea Islands in search of masks. Marooned there, they are blamed for a catastrophe among the native people, which leads to a most unusual punishment: their faces are tattooed. Sara and Philip must confront their new selves and lives, of which tattoos become an important form of expression and documentation. Thirty years later, when Sara returns to New York after meeting a "Life" magazine crew on the beach, her body is a canvas of her art and past. Shifting back and forth in time, Ciment's arresting new novel (after "The Teeth of a Dog") allows readers to explore how events affect who Sara is and what she truly values. Clever and complex, the narrative probes how personal stories and symbolism are represented in -or, in this case, on -the self. Not to be missed; highly recommended. -Caroline Hallsworth, City of Greater Sudbury, Ont.

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2005
Ciment, a fine memoirist and novelist, presents a provocative story of art and trespass. Sara, a plucky Lower East Side shopgirl, gets involved with wealthy would-be artist Philip and proves to be a more talented painter than he. This precipitates an erotically charged power struggle interrupted by the devastation of the Depression. ?Abruptly destitute, they jump at the chance to travel to the South Pacific to collect island art, but disaster awaits. Improvising astutely on the spectacular tattooing culture of the Marquesas Islands, Ciment invents a fictional body-art-focused culture, then orchestrates bitterly ironic catastrophes that maroon Sara on the island of Ta'un'uu and force her to take up the needle in lieu of the brush and create not on canvas but on her own skin. By the time a " Life "reporter tracks her down 30 years later and brings her back to a nearly unrecognizable New York, she, too, has changed beyond all imagining. Similar to novelist Samantha Gillison, Ciment covers cross-cultural terrain, creating a remarkably smart and edgy tale laced with sharp insights into time and change, the nature of the self and the significance of art, folly and survival.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)