AMBITION AND LOVE - Hardcover

Just, Ward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395681960 ISBN 13: 9780395681961

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1994

Synopsis

Pursuing the free and untrammeled life of an artist in Paris, young Georgia Whyte, an aspiring painter, leaves her stodgy American Midwest home to find love and an inner rebirth in the Old World

About this title

About the Author

Ward Just is the author of fourteen previous novels, including the
National book Award finalist Echo House and An Unfinished Season,
winner of the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Award. In a career that
began as a war correspondent for Newsweek and the Washington
Post, Just has lived and written in half a dozen countries, including
Britain, France, and Vietnam. His characters often lead public lives as
politicians, civil servants, soldiers, artists, and writers. It is the tension
between public duty and private conscience that animates much of
his fiction, including Forgetfulness. Just and his wife, Sarah Catchpole,
divide their time between Martha's Vineyard and Paris.

From Kirkus Reviews

Just's (The Translator, 1991, etc.) tenth novel is one of his best. It's about a driven artist, a woman, who has chosen what Yeats called ``perfection...of the work.'' Harry Forrest, American expatriate, successful writer, is admiring the elegant Frenchwoman in the Paris museum when she identifies herself as Georgia Whyte, a Chicago native just like Harry. What follows is the story of her life since their only other meeting, years before back home. In 1968 she'd been an art student, scrutinizing the Winnetka country-club crowd so as to ``lay bare Chicago's hypocrisy'' on canvas. Her Chicago paintings didn't sell, so she moved to Los Angeles, where obnoxious movie producer Ed Smid paid top dollar for her ``product'' and promised fame if she'd do his portrait. But Georgia made art, not deals, even if her refusal meant losing her charming, corruptible boyfriend, Ed's assistant. She found temporary refuge with some surfers. For them, nothing existed but the waves; for Georgia, the canvas. After another spell in Chicago, she moved to Paris and lived reclusively. The only man in her life was a general; he was on horseback, his statue framed by her window. Georgia tried to wrestle him onto canvas, with the help of the ever-present Calvados, until she became deathly ill and was rescued by her neighbor, Alfred, a jazz pianist, and suddenly found herself in love with this gallant loser. A doomed affair, Harry thinks, but he's wrong again. When last heard from, the two bohemians and their baby are living happily in the provinces. What her enemies had seen as Georgia's ``cold heart'' had been her pure artist's soul. Georgia, a fine creation, is both type and individual. Her unceasing creative struggle, that of any artist, is integrated with her personal odyssey in a tightly focused story teeming with credible surprises from a writer at the height of his powers. (First serial to Esquire) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0395681960
• ISBN 13: 9780395681961
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 277