Review:
The lives of rich folks dabbling in the New York art scene of the 1980s makes for surprisingly entertaining reading in
When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth. Fernanda Eberstadt mines this fertile ground with fierce and funny results. Her cast of characters: Alfred Gebler, a poor boy who made good by marrying an heiress with a passion for the avant-garde; Dolly Gebler, daughter of a Midwestern pharmaceutical mogul who inculcated his favorite child with the view that obscene wealth requires penance--preferably in the form of a non-profit arts foundation; and Isaac Hooker, a young innocent from New Hampshire: painter, Harvard drop-out, former soup-kitchen cook, and part-time framer who enters the Geblers' orbit with unpredictable results.
Half the pleasure of reading Eberstadt's novel is her masterful send-up of the patrons and poseurs who populated New York's overheated art scene during the Reagan-Bush years; the other half is in the unsentimental, yet sympathetic portrayal of her main characters. Frequently funny, always penetrating, When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth offers a delightful journey into a world most of us only experience through the pages of glossy magazines.
From Kirkus Reviews:
An ambitious, intelligent portrait of the emergence of a gifted painter, and a sly, convincing depiction of the exotic fringes of the New York art scene. Isaac Hooker (introduced in Eberstadt's Isaac and His Devils, 1991) is, as the novel begins, a hapless if brilliant young man adrift in Manhattan, having fled New Hampshire (and his loyal girlfriend) to make something of himself. Gradually, he discovers an almost obsessive interest in painting, using his (at first) crude, urgent works to come to grips with the painful realities of his past. Eberstadt is particularly deft in catching the way in which art can take over one's life, overriding all other responsibilities, and in tracing the manner in which the troubled, reflective Isaac begins to think his way into what art means to him. Isaac, living hand to mouth, manages to talk his way into a part-time job with the glittering Aurora Foundation, known for its generosity in sponsoring highly idiosyncratic artists. He also swiftly becomes entwined with the sponsors of the Foundation, Dolly and Alfred Gebler. Dolly, an heiress, ``didn't believe in nickle- and-diming; she thought art could change the world.'' She handed her artists ``scads of unfettered money; she bought them space and time.'' And while she has always carefully kept herself somewhat removed from her artists, a benevolent but distant Lady Bountiful, she finds herself falling in love with the rough, bemused Isaac. Alfred watches first with disbelief, and then with increasing anger, as Dolly and Isaac become lovers. Eberstadt's portraits of the anxious New York avant garde, of painters and performance artists and would-be street poets, of mercenary dealers and edgy critics, is sharp and refreshingly tough-minded. Primarily, though, the novel is a study of the coming-of-age of a visionary painter, and as such it is both original and deeply persuasive. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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