The Passion Dream Book: A Novel - Hardcover

Otto, Whitney

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060178248 ISBN 13: 9780060178246

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1997

Synopsis

Fellow artists Romy March and Augustine Marks migrate from place to place, separately and together, united by their constant love for each other, in a story that moves from the Italian Renaissance and the life of Romy's ancestor to the early twentieth century. 100,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo. Tour.

About this title

Reviews

YA. This readable novel spans several centuries and continents, combining fictional characters with historical figures to create an overview of art, especially the role of the patron in its development. In Renaissance Florence, motherless Giulietta Marcel is trained by her father, but she can never become a recognized artist in this male-dominated period. Guilietta spies on Michaelangelo, loving him from afar and earning her livelihood by discovering his works, his habits, and his loves and passing this information on to others. One of her artistically designed boxes, meant to hold mementos, is passed down through the generations until a 20th-century descendant, Romy March, becomes its owner. This treasured possession connects her to Giulietta's passion for art and love. During the early 1900s, Romy has more freedom but still must struggle against America's negative view of art as a feminine career and society's aversion to her love for Augustine, an African American. The couple flees first to Harlem and then to Paris in their search for liberation. Romy finally settles in San Francisco in the 1950s, having come to accept herself. This story is much more than a romance. There is much information about art, especially American art during the early 20th century. YAs will gain insight into this world, its history, and the role of passion in creating gifted artists.?Dottie Kraft, formerly at Fairfax County Public Schools, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Otto (Now You See Her, 1994, etc.) follows a pair of lovers as they migrate through several of the 20th-century's most exotic artistic movements. First, though, there's a prelude in Renaissance Florence: 13- year-old Guilietta Marcel dresses like a boy and is hired to spy on Michelangelo while he's sculpting David. Guilietta is the daughter of a gentle, eccentric artist who's training her to paint; the girl lusts after Michelangelo at the same time as her own artistic vision is developing. Cut to Los Angeles, 1918. Romy March (a descendent of Guilietta's) exchanges gibes with Augustine, a young black man at work with a camera in a public park. Romy's father is skeptical of her inchoate plan to devote her life to some unspecified art. Although only a couple of years older, Augustine already has a gig: He prints tiny photographic images on trendsetters' skin. Romy secures a gofer job at a movie studio, where she again encounters Augustine: The racial mores of the time dictate that the two fall for each other only in private. The lovers take the train east and open a photography studio in Harlem. Augustine is much sought after, doing portraits of many of the greats of the Harlem Renaissance, while Romy's work languishes. And then an ex-lover of Augustine's shows up, his interest is rekindled, and Romy departs for Paris. She becomes Man Ray's assistant-mistress and parties with the art crowd--until Augustine appears. In spite of their grand passion, she keeps moving, swooping in on Bloomsbury-era London and hitting her stride as a photographer before heading to San Francisco, where the couple settle down just as the Beat scene is born. Otto packs in catchy details about art and photography, and lots of stylish parties and clever flirting. Despite the splashy backdrops, though, the central love story is flat and unengaging. Better as a grand tour than as a celebration of art and love. ($75,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

What happens when artists fall in love? This question provides the plot for the latest novel by Otto (How to Make an American Quilt, Villard, 1991). The novel intertwines love and art as it traces two lovers, whose ever-colliding paths lead them across America and Europe. Romy and Augustine share the same passions: photography and each other. Although neither feels whole without the other, yet they find themselves constantly torn apart by their work and by the malicious schemes of others in the artistic community. Their romance begins in the 1920s, but the story actually starts with Romy's ancestor, Giulietta, a young woman of the Italian Renaissance. Otto links the two stories through a wooden box, crafted by Giulietta and inherited, many generations later, by Romy. The scene painted on its lid is of a girl looking into a mirror, where a boy's image is reflected back at her. It seems to have dual meaning, representing the relationship of Romy and Augustine and the sexism that Giulietta faces as a female artist. If you believe in fated love, you might believe in all the coincidences that keep linking the lovers together. Regardless, Romy and Augustine's romance is a compelling story. Recommended.?Erin Cassin, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Otto found her way back to the vein of gold that yielded her lovely popular novel, How to Make an American Quilt (1991), and has written another wise and romantic story of love and creativity, albeit on a far more cosmopolitan scale. The curtain rises on Florence at the dawn of the Renaissance. Enter an aspiring young artist named Giulietta Marcel, who conceals her budding beauty beneath boy's clothes while she earns some gold coins by spying on Michelangelo for a man intent on writing his biography. Enthralled by the work of the master, she worries about her future: How can she break the gender barrier and become an artist in her own right? End of act one. Act two is set in Los Angeles, circa 1918, where Romy March, a descendant of Giulietta, echoes her ancestor's despair over not being taken seriously as an artist. Romy's need to create both fuels and complicates her relationship with Augustine Marks, a black photographer. Theirs is a dangerous liaison in those days of strict segregation, so they go to Harlem where curly-haired, olive-skinned Romy passes as black. They open a photography studio and soon find themselves documenting the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of artistic expression Otto uses to great dramatic effect. But things haven't changed all that much for women artists, and Romy, frustrated at not being accepted as her lover's equal, moves to Paris, thus merging with yet another renaissance. Otto mixes thinly veiled portraits of historical figures with characters of her own invention in each scintillatingly rendered milieu as she explores the dynamics of artistic circles, but the true subject of her tale of passion and slowly realized dreams is love--complex as can be but transcendent and everlasting. Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060178248
• ISBN 13: 9780060178246
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 276