Italian Teacher - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1786482576 ISBN 13: 9781786482570

Publisher: Viking

Synopsis

'Wickedly funny, deeply touching . . . I confess this was the first of Rachman's novels I'd read but I was so swept away by it that I raced out to buy the other three' PATRICK GALE 'Relentlessly entertaining' Daily Mail Rome, 1955 The artists are gathering together for a photograph. In one of Rome's historic villas, a party glitters with socialites and patrons. Bear Bavinsky, creator of vast, masculine, meaty canvases, is their god. He is at the centre of the picture. His wife, Natalie, edges out of the shot. From the side of the room watches little Pinch - their son. At five years old he loves Bear almost as much as he fears him. After Bear abandons their family, Pinch will still worship him, while Natalie faces her own wars with the art world. Trying to live up to his father's name - one of the twentieth century's fiercest and most controversial painters - Pinch never quite succeeds. Yet by the end of a career of twists and compromises, he enacts an unexpected rebellion that will leave forever his mark upon the Bear Bavinsky legacy. What makes an artist? In The Italian Teacher, Tom Rachman displays a nuanced understanding of art and its demons. Moreover, in Pinch he achieves a portrait of vulnerability and frustrated talent that - with his signature humour and humanity -- challenges the very idea of greatness.

About this title

Review

An Amazon Best Book of March 2018: What if your father was one of the 20th century’s most celebrated painters: Julian Schnabel, say, or Lucian Freud? How would you define yourself against that kind of talent and machismo? In The Italian Teacher, his utterly absorbing third novel, Tom Rachman sets in play just that dynamic. Bear Bavinsky is a world-famous painter, a first-class narcissist, and father of seventeen children, whom he treats with careless, sometimes callous, warmth. Bear’s shy son Pinch loves to paint, but his ambitions are snuffed by his father’s offhand critique: “I got to tell you, kiddo. You’re not an artist and you never will be.” After that, nothing in Pinch’s life seems to gel -- until after Bear’s death, when Pinch’s role as caretaker of his father’s legacy grants him scope to come into his own. Ironies abound.

As with Rachman’s 2010 newsroom novel The Imperfectionists, it’s a testament to the credibility of the narrative that you feel he may be writing about real people, thinly disguised as fiction. But in The Italian Teacher, Rachman is a more likeable storyteller: his social satire seems more thoroughly tempered by sympathy and a longer perspective. Lately, a number of excellent novels have focused on the impact of a single painting (The Goldfinch; The Painted Kiss; The Fortunate Ones, to name a few). The Italian Teacher looks at art with a less reverential slant, and asks intriguing questions, along the way, about the costs, and value, of the artistic life. If you enjoyed William Boyd’s Any Human Heart, you’ll love Rachman’s portrait of Pinch, who has the good luck to both outlive and survive his famous father, and to find, in the end, a way to take ownership of his difficult legacy. —Sarah Harrison Smith, Amazon Book Review

About the Author

Born in London and raised in Vancouver, Tom Rachman was a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press stationed in Rome, then an editor at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. He is the author of three novels, the international bestseller The Imperfectionists; The Rise and Fall of Great Powers and The Italian Teacher, as well as a short stories collection, Basket of Deplorables. He lives in London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• ISBN 10: 1786482576
• ISBN 13: 9781786482570
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1