The Love-Artist: A Novel - Softcover

Alison, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312420064 ISBN 13: 9780312420062

Publisher: Picador, 2002

Synopsis

Why was Ovid, the most popular poet of his day, banished from Rome? Why do only two lines survive of his play Medea, reputedly his most passionate, most accomplished work? Between the known details of Ovid’s life and these enigmas, Jane Alison has created a haunting drama of
psychological manipulation, and an ingenious meditation on love, art and immortality. When Ovid encounters a woman who embodies the fictitious creations of his soon-to-be published Metamorphoses, he is enchanted, obsessed, and inspired. Part healer, part witch, she seems to be myth come to life, and Ovid lures her away from her home by the Black Sea to Rome. But the inexorable pull of ambition leads him to make a Faustian bargain with fate that will betray his newfound muse.

About this title

About the Author:

Jane Alison has a degree in classics from Princeton University and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. She lives in Germany.

From Publishers Weekly:

Little is known about Ovid's life in exile in the first century A.D., and only two lines of his acclaimed Medea survive today. In this strong debut novel, Alison reimagines Ovid's sojourn on the east coast of the Black Sea, where Emperor Augustus, in the middle of a campaign to restore morality to his new empire, has banished the poet, displeased by the success of his Loves and The Art of Love. Here Ovid meets Xenia, a wild-eyed young woman who lives in isolation. The only literate person in her community, Xenia acts as town mystic, casting spells, healing the sick and telling futures. Ovid, who admits he believes in Amazons, with "their strong sweating thighs clutching galloping horses, wild howls coming from their parched, cracked mouths," is eager to be stunned by the "fishy, monstrous, unreal." He imagines the jealous, stormy Xenia to be his Galatea and sweeps her back to Rome, where she unwittingly becomes the muse for the lost Medea, his darkest work. From Alison's depiction of a trio of gossips at a patrician's dinner party, "dark eyes flying from one to the other like torches," to her description of an evening walk in Rome freighted with the knowledge that thousands of animals are "denned beneath the city's streets until they were let out, half starved, to devour terrified criminals or be speared in the emperor's shows," she demonstrates familiarity and ease with her subject; and her historic detail is never pedantic. Even those unfamiliar with Ovid and Roman history will delight in this tale of romantic intrigue, rife with blood, jealous rage and the consciousness of human frailty.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0312420064
• ISBN 13: 9780312420062
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 242