The Painting

October 4, 2004
A host of brittle characters populate this oblique historical novel, set in two very different locations at the same moment in history: Tokyo during the Meiji Restoration and Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. Debut author Schuyler tenuously connects these settings when Ayoshi, a frantically unhappy young Japanese woman who seeks to escape her hated arranged marriage by painting memories of her old lover, sends off a painting wrapped around one of her husband's ceramic bowls. The bowls make their way to Paris, where the painting is discovered by Jorgen, a disabled mercenary soldier from Denmark sitting out the remainder of the war as a merchant's assistant. As miserable as Ayoshi, Jorgen finds himself drawn against his will to his boss's bastard sister Natalia, who has signed up to become a woman soldier. The novel shuttles back and forth between Japan and Paris, but Schuyler never develops a compelling reason to link the two periods, either in plot or in theme. The historical tragedies of Paris and Japan remain stubbornly separate, just as the characters remain unreachable, too caught up in their own webs of misery to become fully alive on the page. Schuyler opts to forgo traditional punctuation, which lends her prose a spare poetic sensibility, and relief comes from moments of almost haiku-like beauty ("She's like a slice of the moonlight") that break through the gloom. Agent, Michelle Tressler at Carlisle & Co. Author tour.

Starred review from September 1, 2004
Every so often, you start a novel that you can't put down; Schuyler's debut is such a book. Set in the 1870s, it drops readers into two parallel worlds, that of Ayoshi, a 26-year-old Japanese artist trapped in a loveless marriage to a disabled potter, and that of Jorgen, a Danish soldier fighting for France in the Franco-Prussian War. When Jorgen is wounded, he is forced to take a job cataloging goods that will eventually be sold on the Parisian black market. Although Jorgen is bored by the position's repetitive demands, the discovery of an elegant and mysterious painting wrapped around a ceramic bowl from Japan propels him to reevaluate his assumptions about love, relationships, and autonomy. At the same time, he ponders the artist's motives and goals. While Jorgen and Ayoshi never meet in fact, they know nothing of each another the chronicle of their lives is tightly woven into a compelling narrative. The book has everything believable and interesting characters, fascinating social commentary, and a lively pace. Highly recommended. Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2004
Art is both seductress and salve in this iridescent first novel set in late-nineteenth-century Japan and France. Desperately unhappy in her arranged marriage, young, beautiful Ayoshi retreats to her studio, where she paints erotic watercolors of a former lover. The vibrant portraits are worlds away from the colorless life she shares with her husband, Hiyashi, a government official and potter who sells his wares overseas. Ayoshi secretly wraps one of her creations around a ceramic vase bound for Europe, where it is discovered by Jorgen, a Paris merchandise shop employee who lost his leg--and his idealism--fighting in the Franco-Prussian war. The radiant image gradually transforms the jaded young Dane, prompting him to pursue brave, blue-eyed Natalia, who is determined to become a soldier. Schuyler laces her lean, lyrical prose with nuanced images of nature: the morning's "faint peach glow," " a twig of cherry blossoms, its pale pink flowers, delicate, like a newborn." A cast of secondary characters, many with their own dark secrets, adds depth and dimension to this engrossing debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)