Rating: 
Summary: I'd rather be looking at the paintings
Review: In the tradition of Girl With the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier and Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland, Harriet Chessman Scott has fashioned a fictional account of how six of the artist Mary Cassatt's paintings were conceived and then painted. Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Papers also tells of the warm relationship between Mary and her ailing sister and model Lydia. Long an admirer of Mary Cassatt's works, I looked forward to reading this book but unfortunately I never found myself in the Cassatt world as I did with Vermeer's works when I read the books mentioned above.Lydia Cassatt, the older sister of Mary, is afflicted with Bright's disease a debilitating illness that ultimately leads to death. While Lydia suffers for weeks on end, when she is feeling good, Mary urges her to sit for her paintings. And as Mary paints, Lydia reflects on the artisty of her sister as well as her life filled with family and travels. Lydia also reflects on Mary's relationship with the artist Degas and her younger sisters creative passion for all things both artistic and spiritual. While reproductions of the actual paintings Lydia sat for are included, the book was never as intersting as imagining what the paintings were all about. This is a rather short novel which I'm afraid didn't shed enough light on Mary Cassatt or her sister. Finally, it didn't leave me with the feeling of doing moreresearch on these women as I did about Vermeer after reading the Chevlaier and Vreeland books.
Rating: 
Summary: Sweet and simple
Review: Just a sweet and simple book about sisterly love and having to face one's own mortality. Lots of metaphoric prose and colorful descriptions. A small insight into the world of art and artists. Subtly presented, yet deep in meaning and insightfulness. Can easily be read in a couple of hours.
Rating:
Summary: Lyrical and Contemplative
Review: Lydia Cassatt (1837-82) was the older sister of the avant-garde American-born Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt (1844-1926). This lovely novella, 'Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper' by Harriet Scott Chessman, is set in Paris and its environs in the late 1870s to early 1880s and recreates a fictional portrayal of their life en famille and with close friends like Edgar Dégas, the French Impressionist. Because it was the time of the Impressionist exhibitions in Paris, there are mentions of other artists such as Gustave Caillebotte, Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Berthe Morisot. Lydia often posed for Mary, which she found to be 'a form of enchantment.' Afflicted with Bright's disease, a fatal disease of the kidneys, Lydia endured much pain and weakness to sit still while her sister painted her. Through the use of internal monologue in a stream-of-consciousness Impressionistic style, Ms. Chessman allows the reader to experience the passing thoughts, memories, and reflections of Lydia. Lydia had remained an unmarried woman because her fiancé had been killed in the Civil War. Mary (called May) was also unmarried, through choice, because she did not wish to compromise her artistic career with marriage and motherhood. Included in the pages of this novella are five beautiful color plates of paintings of Lydia by Mary Cassatt. Each of the five short chapters contains almost a meditation on each painting. Through the imaginative writing of Ms. Chessman, I learned more about the details of Cassatt's paintings, such as the possible meaning of a scarlet sash in 'Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly' (1880); that there was a pair of Mary's burgundy leather gloves resting on the loom in 'Lydia Seated at a Tapestry Frame' (1880/81); and that the little girl in 'Woman and Child Driving' (1879) was Edgar Dégas's niece. Mary painted the cover portrait of Lydia, 'Woman Reading,' in 1878/79, and the novella gave me a glimpse of what Lydia might have been thinking and feeling while she posed for it. Lydia's preference was to read poetry by Tennyson rather than the Le Journal newspaper that she is holding in this portrait. Mary Cassatt's portraits of Lydia look unposed, so I was somewhat surprised to read about the sessions where the silently suffering Lydia had posed for hours. This novella has inspired me to view Mary Cassatt's work with a fresh eye. Now looking at the vivacious décolletage portrait of 'Lydia in a Loge, Wearing a Pearl Necklace' (1879), which is not discussed in this book, I might imagine her enjoying a rare night out at the opera, possibly in a happier mood. Lydia was model and muse for Mary, and 'Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper' shows a contemplative reflection of the artist's gaze.
Rating:
Summary: Uneven fiction posing as fact
Review: There is much that is admirable about the novella LYDIA CASSATT READING THE MORNING PAPER, and there is just as much that is annoying. Inescapably, this fictionalized biography of a valiant woman succumbing to a fatal illness has a subtext of pathos. Thus, hardly surprisingly, the story never quite is able to get past its own grim underlying reality. At the same time, though author Harriet Scott Chessman is a wonderful writer, the book is so short that it seems as if she is cheating her readers. There have been several works of fiction in the recent past offering possible background accounts of famous artists, or their subjects, or of the periods during which their most famous works were created. The two similar books about Vermeer, GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE and GIRL WITH PEARL EARRING, each are more fully formed than Lydia Cassatt's report is here. Maybe it is fair to say that this idea of writing a fiction around a well-regarded painting is an idea which has been worked, and worked successfully--and that it is past time for other authors to move along to new forms of inspiration. It is jarring to read thoughts being put into the mind of Lydia Cassatt when the author has no way of knowing what Lydia might have been thinking. This device completely breaks the natural flow of the story. Of course, this always is a risk when any author writes a fictionalized account of an episode in a real person's life. The detail of life in Paris, specifically the lives of rich expatriate Americans in that moment of Henry James and Edith Wharton, are vivid and fascinating. The exploration of the movement of Impressionist art at the very time when it still was being formed by artists then considered iconoclasts is the highlight of the book. Physically, it is not overstating to say that LYDIA CASSATT READING THE MORNING PAPER is a beautiful little gem of a novella, illustrated as it is with small reproductions of the paintings at issue.
Rating: 
Summary: Best book I've read all year---and I read a lot!
Review: This compassionate, beautifully written tale celebrates life, death, art, poetry, and sisterhood. It lacks the bitterness of Girl with a Pearl Earring, which I didn't care for at all. You will never look at these paintings in the same way again. It also reminded me of the beauty of what my own sister left behind. Many thanks to the author for such a compelling book.
Rating:
Summary: Artists and Sisters
Review: This is an extraordinarily moving and beautifully written novel. Chessman takes the reader somewhere new: to the inner life of a famous painter and her dying sister. We see Paris in the 1880s; we meet Degas and the Mary Cassatt; we relive the sudio sessions in which Lydia Cassatt sat as a model for her sister Mary. And beyond all that, we come to confront our own mortality as Lydia poses bravely for her sister, living on in paintings that capture the delicate ties between sisters, between women, among artists and their models. This is a book about life and death, art and love, beauty and transcience. I could not put it down once I started reading it, and I can't stop thinking about it now that I have finished. I recommend it to all.
Rating:
Summary: Lovely, well-written story based on actual paintings
Review: This novel is a recent example of the trend in using an artist's life or body of works to create work of fiction. Thanks to the author's imagination, talent and historical research, I was able to far better appreciate the paintings reading the book than I was in my art history classes 20 years ago.
Rating:
Summary: Lovely, well-written story based on actual paintings
Review: This novel is a recent example of the trend in using an artist's life or body of works to create work of fiction. Thanks to the author's imagination, talent and historical research, I was able to far better appreciate the paintings reading the book than I was in my art history classes 20 years ago.
Rating:
Summary: Reading this beautiful volume: akin to visiting a museum....
Review: This very short novella about the famed impressionist Mary Cassatt, is narrated from the uniquely interesting perspective of her unknown and tragically short lived sister who was afflicted by an illness incurable in those days. Five of Mary's paintings which portray Lydia are chosen and very nicely reproduced in this small neatly compact volume. Each becomes the focus of a chapter. There is no real plot or action or suspense. Instead, reading each of these five introspective chapters mimics the act of really contemplating a work of art. The art lover will particularly enjoy and learn from Chessman's descriptions of the paintings and the way she relates them to Lydia's illness. Overall the amount of biographical information revealed about the Cassatts is relatively small. For example we learn Mary would outlive Lydia and go on to paint for 30 more years-but not that she would suffer the tragedy of blindness in her later years. The book will leave the reader eager to know more and to view Mary's work.
Rating:
Summary: Reading this beautiful volume: akin to visiting a museum....
Review: This very short novella about the famed impressionist Mary Cassatt, is narrated from the uniquely interesting perspective of her unknown and tragically short lived sister who was afflicted by an illness incurable in those days. Five of Mary's paintings which portray Lydia are chosen and very nicely reproduced in this small neatly compact volume. Each becomes the focus of a chapter. There is no real plot or action or suspense. Instead, reading each of these five introspective chapters mimics the act of really contemplating a work of art. The art lover will particularly enjoy and learn from Chessman's descriptions of the paintings and the way she relates them to Lydia's illness. Overall the amount of biographical information revealed about the Cassatts is relatively small. For example we learn Mary would outlive Lydia and go on to paint for 30 more years-but not that she would suffer the tragedy of blindness in her later years. The book will leave the reader eager to know more and to view Mary's work.
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