The Guy, the Girl, the Artist and His Ex

January 2, 2017
The 1986 theft of Picasso’s Weeping Woman from the National Gallery in Melbourne, Australia, has unforeseen consequences for Williams’s (Beatle Meets Destiny) four narrators, whose stories overlap and culminate in a shocking event. Guy is an unmotivated high school senior throwing the party of the year. Seventeen-year-old Rafi is disciplined and driven, responsible for a mentally ill mother mourning the death of her three-year-old son. Luke, 27, is an antiestablishment rising art star with a young son he rarely sees. And Penny, Luke’s ex, is a 23-year-old college graduate navigating single motherhood. An intimate third-person narrative shifts among all four, providing perspective and insight into each of them and their relationships as the ripple effects of the theft grow. Rafi and Penny are perhaps the most compelling characters: Rafi must confront her own choices and difficult truths about her mother, while Penny fully comes into her own, taking charge of her and her son’s futures. Guy and Luke, by contrast, are largely passive and unchanged by events. Quiet but layered, Williams’s story lingers. Ages 13–up.