Portrait of the Artist's Wife - Hardcover

Anderson, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393034895 ISBN 13: 9780393034899

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1993

Synopsis

While Sarah Tandy is determined to nurture her talent as a painter and keep her marriage intact, her husband, Jack Macalister, is equally determined to remain the cheerfully philandering and selfish man that he is

About this title

Reviews

Possessed of an assured, pared-down wisdom, this appealing novel opens as New Zealand painter Sarah Tandy gives a eulogy for her late husband, writer Jack Macalister, at a reception in honor of his posthumously published novel. What follows is the delicately drawn third-person recollection of Sarah's life with Jack, as both artist's wife and artist in her own right. Anderson ( Girls' High ) portrays Sarah, Jack, their friends and family with deft subtlety, her unflagging attention to everyday details (those selected and those left out) establishing significance in an indirect, convincing way. The narrative voice is true to each stage of Sarah's life, beginning with her childhood, shared with Jack as a family friend, through the early years of their marriage, their foibles and infidelities, to Sarah's struggle to find herself through her work while still fulfilling the roles of wife and mother. Sarah at 20 is as believable and engrossing a character as she is at 50. Anderson weaves together events of several decades in a seamless, succinct narrative that captures both the simplicity and the complexity of her character's life.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

That title's misleading: the portrait (in this 63-year-old New Zealand author's second novel, though first US publication) is of a marriage between two artists, and comes attached to an elaborate family chronicle. When 52-year-old Jack McAlister dies of a heart attack in l987, he's New Zealand's most respected novelist, while his wife Sarah Tandy (first seen launching Jack's last, posthumous, book) is a painter of note who's exhibited in London and Sydney. The two were childhood friends in Hawke's Bay, a bucolic community perfect for raising kids but less good for expanding minds. When Jack accidentally gets the 17-year-old Sarah pregnant (the year is 1952) and their parents reluctantly consent to their marriage, the lovebirds seize the chance to move to the big city (Wellington, the capital) and don't allow the birth of baby Dora to throw them off their creative stride. Jack does his four pages a day, while Sarah knows she must ``keep her energy for painting'' and learn from Otto Becker, a wonderfully helpful retired Austrian Jewish art teacher she's met on the beach. ``Jack understood Sarah's need to work...they shared the tunnel-vision selfishness'' of committed artists. Though the marriage will later be strained by Jack's drinking and fooling around, essentially it's a harmonious arrangement--but this lack of a core tension is bad news for the reader, who must make do with self-contained episodes (a second accidental baby, a year in London) as the novel moves through its 44-year span and a crowd of minor characters. Finally, it's prize- winning Jack who steals the show (Sarah's Sydney success getting only one paragraph). Jack and Sarah's creative struggles are obscured by domestic trivia, making this no more than a mildly agreeable read. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Set in New Zealand, this wonderful story recounts the stormy but enduring marriage of artist Sarah Tandy to writer Jack Macalister. They are very young, poor, and expecting a baby when they marry, but they are determined to pursue careers in their respective fields. Both Sarah and Jack are successful. The obstacles to Sarah's development are particularly formidable, but, paradoxically, the marriage survives because of the total selfishness of the partners. While emphasizing the independence of each character, the author also beautifully describes their interdependence. "His wife's absorption while working left Jack unscathed, as his silences did her. They shared throughout their lives the same unease, the same sense of work unfinished.... They respected each other's judgement, which was not given until asked for." This work deserves a wide audience; Anderson's writing is so good that the New Zealand colloquialisms actually serve to enhance the story and place us in the plot with great immediacy. Recommended for most collections.
- Patricia C. Heaney, Nassau Community Coll. Lib., Garden City, N.Y.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393034895
• ISBN 13: 9780393034899
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 308