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The Underpainter

The Underpainter

List Price: $69.95
Your Price: $69.95
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Jane Urquhart's The Underpainter, a gem of a novel
Review: I found Jane Urquhart's novel to be quite compelling and well-written. Being an artist myself, I was eager to read a novel whose main character was an artist. The author captured the way in which art (any art) training is abjectly consuming at the expense of individual development. Artists and musicians tend toward the egocentric . . . partly because of the intensity of their training. Austin certainly fell into that category.

I was also pleased that Ms. Urquhart was able to depict with sensitivity the effects of trauma on the human psyche. She was not only sensitive but very graphic if one was able to travel with her during the story's telling. It is rare to find such idiosycratic topics dealt with in the context of a novel much less to find them dealt with really well.

The most compelling thing about the novel, however, is the warmth and compassion that she develops and portrays in her characters. In spite of their very human frailties, they are lovable if not always likeable.

I look forward to reading other Jane Urquhart works!

An artist/musician/reader

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Jane Urquhart's The Underpainter, a gem of a novel
Review: I found Jane Urquhart's novel to be quite compelling and well-written. Being an artist myself, I was eager to read a novel whose main character was an artist. The author captured the way in which art (any art) training is abjectly consuming at the expense of individual development. Artists and musicians tend toward the egocentric . . . partly because of the intensity of their training. Austin certainly fell into that category.

I was also pleased that Ms. Urquhart was able to depict with sensitivity the effects of trauma on the human psyche. She was not only sensitive but very graphic if one was able to travel with her during the story's telling. It is rare to find such idiosycratic topics dealt with in the context of a novel much less to find them dealt with really well.

The most compelling thing about the novel, however, is the warmth and compassion that she develops and portrays in her characters. In spite of their very human frailties, they are lovable if not always likeable.

I look forward to reading other Jane Urquhart works!

An artist/musician/reader

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: is this what we've become?
Review: I had the uncanny feeling that Austin Fraser is us in the west - modern western man (woman / person?) - shallow (underpainted), no commitments, no sense of personal responsibility, no guilt, no sense of sin, no remorse, no conscience, no moral fabric, no deep feeling, no real character - all freedom, all surface, to be defined and re-defined (overpainted) as required, like television images. The only time Fraser appears to come alive occurs when he is confronted by Rockwell Kent (the real and valid life force?), who tells him the truth about himself (God forbid that modern man (woman / person?) should be told straight to his (her) face what's really going on!- it could be litigious). And what does he do? He utterly rejects Kent - rejects any sort of being beyond the shallow, clinical, technical entity that he is, and documents (documents, not writes) the act. There does not appear to be a trace of real deep awareness. Except that he is threatened enough by the Sara's, Rockwell's, Augusta's, and George's to lock himself away in his essentially empty and lifeless house in Rochester. Fraser is a well-rendered and very sad comment on what we seem to have become - two-dimensional television screen images. all surface and no substance. The only thing that bothered me about this book is something I can't really put my finger on, since I am no literary expert. I had the feeling that it read like most other novels I've read in the past few years about Ontario and / or by Ontario writers (?).

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brilliantly exposes the selfishness of the artist's world
Review: One way I measure a book is by how much it makes me think - and for how long after I've finished it. I first read this book two years ago, and still it haunts me. The characters are not especially sympathetic - least of all the artist - but what is disturbing is how well they are drawn from real life. The author has as remarkable an eye for character and human nature as a fine painter for his or her subject. I've recommended this book to many, but only to those who can appreciate a story of quiet depth. It's also a story that demands rereading.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: haunting
Review: One way I measure a book is by how much it makes me think - and for how long after I've finished it. I first read this book two years ago, and still it haunts me. The characters are not especially sympathetic - least of all the artist - but what is disturbing is how well they are drawn from real life. The author has as remarkable an eye for character and human nature as a fine painter for his or her subject. I've recommended this book to many, but only to those who can appreciate a story of quiet depth. It's also a story that demands rereading.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Do not waste your time (or money)
Review: This book, in spite of the fact that it received the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1997, is a complete waste of time. The talk about painting and art is incessant. The character development is minimal in spite of the books length. The last thirty pages of the story are moderately OK and, coupled with some of the earlier parts, PERHAPS would have made a decent short story. Quite frankly, the Governor General needs to read more if this is the best he (now she) can do.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Do not waste your time (or money)
Review: This book, in spite of the fact that it received the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1997, is a complete waste of time. The talk about painting and art is incessant. The character development is minimal in spite of the books length. The last thirty pages of the story are moderately OK and, coupled with some of the earlier parts, PERHAPS would have made a decent short story. Quite frankly, the Governor General needs to read more if this is the best he (now she) can do.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Underpainter also UnderAuthored
Review: This story is completely obscure -- is the point here that you can cover up what might be a vivid story with trails of thought so hazy that only a persistent reader can remember from page to page what's going on? If so, here's a great example of Underauthoring.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I wish I had not read this book
Review: While I appreciated the clever use of imagery and symbolism in the book, and the author's grasp of a multitude of subjects, the emotional and moral infancy of the main character irritated me so much I wish I had not read this book. I would the narrator had ended his own miserable existence early on in the novel rather than devastate the lives of every decent person he encountered.


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