A Nearly Perfect Copy

Starred review from January 7, 2013
In Amend’s clever, wry second novel (after Stations West) American art expert Elm Howells enjoys her work at Tinsley’s, the auction house her great-grandfather founded, but the recent loss of her young son has become an obsession she can’t shake. When she learns at a party that the hosts plan to clone their dead dog in Europe, Elm sets off on an unlikely path to get her precious son back—literally. Meanwhile, Spanish painter Gabriel Connois, the great-grandson of renowned painter Marcel Connois of the mid-19th-century group Les Hiverains, finds himself, after two decades in France, still a cultural and art world outsider. But at a friend’s show, he meets Colette, who works in the French branch of Tinsley’s, and she introduces him to her wealthy uncle, Augustus Klinman, who commissions Gabriel to do a slew of drawings in the style of Les Hiverains. Decorating luxury hotels not only gives Gabriel a lot of money, it leads to a solo show. Colette connects Elm with Klinman, who is attempting to pass off Gabriel’s work as authentic Les Hiverains. She smells a rat, but cloning isn’t cheap and she enters into a complicated moral dilemma. Amend makes her characters immediately real, depicting their complicated desires and decisions in a highly enjoyable, nearly perfect novel. Agent: Terra Chalberg, Chalberg & Sussman.

January 15, 2013
The third book by Amend (Stations West, 2010, etc.) is a fast-paced, lively novel of forgery. Gabriel Connois is the Spanish-born relation of a prominent contemporary of Degas. A talented but rather cranky, mercurial personality, he occupies what is beginning to seem a permanent spot at the impoverished margins of the Paris art world--an outsiderdom that's exacerbated by the limitations of his French and by his uncompromising attitude toward the bourgeois art world. Meanwhile, in New York, Elmira "Elm" Howells holds a prestigious place at her family's artauction house. Elm's marriage is a bit chilly, and her career is languishing, in part since the auction house is now headed by a rather imperious and skeptical cousin but mainly sinceshe's been absolutely unstrung by grief after the death (vacation, tsunami) of her young son Ronan. Early in the book, Gabriel--a gifted copyist and mimic who owes his start in the art world to his perfect replica of a painting by his famous forebear that hung in his childhood house--gets tempted, bit by bit, into a scheme that seems simultaneously to lay waste to and to fulfill his ambitions...and Elm, too, is swept into the conspiracy, at the other end, by her desperation to replace the son she lost. Amend provides a fizzy, entertaining insider's look at the conjunction of visual art and commerce--especially the world of art auctions--and though the portrait of Elm's family life and a subplot about cloning (human analog of forgery) are less convincing and strain credulity, they don't detract too much from the charm and enjoyment provided by Amend's exploration of the ethics and the mechanics of the art world. A few preposterous plot points, but overall, this is a quick, provocative and likable read.

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March 1, 2013

Amend (Things That Pass for Love) presents a tangled tale of two unrelated characters under grave emotional duress whose actions affect each other indelibly, though they remain strangers for the duration of the novel. The writing in the novel's first half is somewhat cumbersome and ponderous, with much unnecessary and distracting detail. The setting is the complicated and ever-changing art world of New York and Paris, and although Amend portrays easy familiarity with this context, some readers may find their interest wavering. The protagonists are the troubled Elm Howells, who works at a prestigious Manhattan auction house, and the marginal but ambitious French artist Gabriel Connois, but other characters are introduced abruptly and developed rather unevenly without having fully captivated the reader's interest. VERDICT Although the story line is provocative and intriguing, and some fine characterization develops eventually, this book will appeal more to readers in the know regarding the art world than to a more general audience.--Joyce Townsend, Pittsburg, CA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2013
Amend (Stations West, 2010) puts her provocative and original spin on the art-forgery novel. Writing with supple command, caustic wit, and a deep fascination with decent people who lose their moral compass, Amend brings us into a classy New York art auction house founded by Elm's (for Elmira) great-grandfather, where she is the expert on drawings and prints. In spite of her successful professional and personal lives, Elm is as vulnerable as everyone else to tragedy and the aberrations of grief. As she struggles with loss, Gabriel, a poor, discouraged Spanish artist in Paris, suddenly finds a path to success after meeting a shrewd and sexy woman at an opening. Elm and Gabriel both end up snared in a web of high-stakes deceit involving illicit copies. Not just forgeries but also, of all disturbing things, clones. As Amend tracks the descent of her two wounded and alienated innocents into lies, desperation, and crime, her visual acuity, fluent psychology, venture into the shadow side of the art world, and storytelling verve make for a blue-chip novel of substance and suspense.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)