Leaving Van Gogh

January 17, 2011
With several middle-grade books behind her, Wallace makes her adult fiction debut with an intense look at the last months of Vincent van Gogh through the eyes of Paul Gachet, a doctor specializing in mental illness. In the spring of 1890 Theo van Gogh, Vincent's younger brother, approaches Gachet with a request. Vincent was moving to Auvres, France, to paint and seek peace in the countryside. Theo wants Gachet, who once lived in the region, to supervise his brother. Gachet, a known patron of the arts and an amateur artist himself, agrees and is immediately drawn to van Gogh's luminous work. As the seasons pass he bears witness to the painter's mental anguish and struggles to determine what maladies so consume him. As he watches the artist's troubling downfall, Gachet must determine how best to care for van Gogh—and the family his death would leave in need. Tapping a deep well of research, Wallace paints a portrait of how madness can both make and break a man. But by making the clinical Gachet his narrator, the author pushes readers away, rather than giving them a chance to get to know the haunted figure behind the canvas.

January 1, 2011

Wallace, who has written 20 mostly humorous or lightweight books since she co-authored The Official Preppy Handbook (1980), enters the realm of historical fiction with this novel about Vincent van Gogh.

Like Alyson Richman in The Last Van Gogh (2006), Wallace concentrates on the artist's last days and his involvement with the family of Dr. Gachet. The basic facts are known: Van Gogh spent his last 70 days in Auvers painting a huge number of works before he shot himself; while in Auvers he spent considerable time with Gachet, a widower with two children, Marguerite and Paul. While Richman focused on Vincent's relationship with Gachet's daughter Marguerite—whose portrait he painted as well as Gachet's—Wallace has Gachet narrate. According to him, he has always befriended painters, amassing an impressive collection of impressionist paintings, and dabbles in painting and etching himself. Vincent's brother Theo, who supports Vincent, employs Gachet to watch over the artist. Gachet quickly recognizes the brilliance of Vincent's work. When Vincent's erratic behavior flares, Gachet suggests a "cordial" to soothe him, but Vincent tells Gachet that he must paint to keep sane. Both Marguerite and Paul grow obsessed with Vincent and follow him around. Vincent thinks of Marguerite only as a subject to paint. He becomes furious at Paul when Paul's dog destroys one of his paintings. After Theo comes to visit with his wife and baby, Gachet realizes he has advanced syphilis. But Theo's financial responsibility to his family drives him to keep working as an art dealer even as his health declines. Learning of Theo's condition, Vincent becomes unable to paint. Without painting he has no wish to live. Gachet, still guilty that he refused his consumptive wife's plea to help her die years earlier, decides to help Vincent by leaving his loaded gun where Vincent will find it.

The drama is muted, but van Gogh's mix of genius and madness continues to fascinate.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2010

Wallace made her name as coauthor of The Official Preppy Handbook, but her debut novel backtracks to Vincent van Gogh's final days, told from the perspective of his dedicated psychiatric doctor, Paul-Ferdinand Gachet. Note that Wallace just received a master's in art history from Columbia. For readers who love Susan Vreeland's works and van Gogh generally.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2011
What happened to Vincent van Gogh after he cut off his ear? Wallace (The Official Preppy Handbook, 1980) begins in the aftermath of that event, when van Gogh retires to the French countryside under the care of psychiatrist Dr. Paul Gachet. From this historical base, she imagines van Goghs final months through Gachets eyes. Drawn into the doctors family circle, Vincent initially thrives and paints furiously, work that Wallace expertly brings alive, down to the brushstroke. Yet van Gogh succumbs to darkness, and Gachet is unable to treat him. Ultimately, this is not so much a novel about art or genius as it is about mental illness, and includes flashbacks to Gachets training at an insane asylum. With profound empathy, compassion, and insight, Wallace fully inhabits both Vincents despondency and Gachets futility as they despair of a cure, pondering the ease with which a wound can be stitched versus the baffling maladies of the mind. Who has not felt the shroud of melancholy? Gachet wonders. It is a fine line, indeed, that separates the mentally ill from the sane.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)