| Title | : | The Truth About Lorin Jones |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0517079755 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780517079751 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 328 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1988 |
| Awards | : | Prix Femina Étranger (1989) |
The Truth About Lorin Jones Reviews
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Trounced by my inability to absolutely love every page of Gravity’s Rainbow like I was foolishly expecting (but secretly pleased to be contrary all the same) I decided to read something appropriately oppositional instead, filched from a friend’s mother’s sister’s library. And you can’t get less reliable than a friend’s mother’s sister’s library. Or in this case, you can. This novel boasts more hateful feminists than a backstage at a Le Tigre concert and more oleaginous male chauvinists than backstage at a Garth Brooks concert. The protagonist Polly is trying to write a book on mysterious painter (see title) Lorin Jones (ha, fooled you!) who she believes was ruined by patriarchal attitudes. She later learns this wasn’t the case and she was the absolute bitch. That’s your novel. Quite cunning and quite clever, workwomanlike on the prose level. But better than the first sixty-nine pages of Gravity’s Rainbow.
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I love the characters that Alison Lurie creates, so human and so flawed. She has a gentle, wicked sense of humor when describing the art scene in New York, and the feminist movement of the 1970s. Polly is an unhappy divorced woman and single mother who despises men. She decides to write a biography of her heroine, an artist named Lorin Jones, because she identifies with her treatment by the masculine world. In the end, though, Polly finds that she and her muse aren’t much alike after all. It’s a very readable novel and with a good ending, too.
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I first read this around fifteen years ago. I remember liking it fine, but not much else. It's been on my bookshelf since then, unnoticed, until this Christmas when my 86-year-old mother took it down and started reading. I'd forgotten all about it, but since, like the book's protagonist, I'm also an art historian turned writer, working on the lives of women artists, I knew I had to read it again (though my mom didn't love it). So as soon as she was done, I picked it up.
A satire (though loving) of feminism, biography, the art world, artists, poets, lovers, lesbians & heteros. What's not to like? Polly Alter, failed painter turned art historian turned feminist biographer, doesn't know her own mind. Or libido. Or much of anything anymore. And she's turned to researching the life of one of her favorite painters, Lorin Jones, who died too young but left an inspiring oeuvre behind. Maybe understanding LJ will help her understand herself. Suspecting the artist's death was, literally or emotionally, on the hands of her male husband, dealer, father, lover, brother, Polly sets out to unearth the truth. What she finds surprises and changes her.
This isn't a deep book, necessarily, but it's beautifully crafted and plotted and, to my mind, utterly satisfying. Thoroughly enjoyed it. -
It's an easy read, and it keeps you interested, but you have to wade through all of the (and I never thought I would say this but) feminist bullshit. Which is so heavy handed that it must be there to make a point, and in the end, the point is obvious, but BLEH. I don't like seeing feminists as villians. I also don't like seeing the ugly underbelly of the art world. So, I guess it's just me.
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An excellent novel. Not only is it a good story, but it is so readably written that I am clear through its 328 pages in only a couple of days after having it recommended to me. As one of the blurbs on the back says, you can look at it like a modern Pride and Prejudice, showing you by concentrating on a small group of characters what relationships were like for everybody in a bygone society. Only in this case the bygone society is the American artsy crowd in 1988. You'll care about Polly Alter, the insecure protagonist of The Truth About Lorin Jones, as much as you cared about finding husbands for the Austen women. I speak obliquely so as not to tell you the plot, for it's quite an interesting plot and you should have the pleasure of hearing about it from Alison Lurie, not from me. She's written some other novels, and I'll look forward to them as well.
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I first read this around fifteen years ago. I remember liking it fine, but not much else. It's been on my bookshelf since then, unnoticed, until this Christmas when my 86-year-old mother took it down and started reading. I'd forgotten all about it, but since, like the book's protagonist, I'm also an art historian turned writer, working on the lives of women artists, I knew I had to read it again (though my mom didn't love it). So as soon as she was done, I picked it up.
A satire (though loving) of feminism, biography, the art world, artists, poets, lovers, lesbians & heteros. What's not to like? Polly Alter, failed painter turned art historian turned feminist biographer, doesn't know her own mind. Or libido. Or much of anything anymore. And she's turned to researching the life of one of her favorite painters, Lorin Jones, who died too young but left an inspiring oeuvre behind. Maybe understanding LJ will help her understand herself. Suspecting the artist's death was, literally or emotionally, on the hands of her male husband, dealer, father, lover, brother, Polly sets out to unearth the truth. What she finds surprises and changes her.
This isn't a deep book, necessarily, but it's beautifully crafted and plotted and, to my mind, utterly satisfying. Thoroughly enjoyed it. -
We all know that Alison Lurie writes extremely well, so it is no surprise her The Truth About Lorin Jones is interesting and suspenseful. This is the story of a 39 year old intelligent, divorced New York mother who plans to write the biography of a female artist who lived and died mysteriously 20 years earlier. Lurie is quite sly and some of her dialog very witty, but her beautiful protagonist is far too malleable, believing the version of Lorin Jones given her by each person she interviews. I also thought it takes her far too long--since she's a smart woman--to solve her own problems in connection with the best friend who comes to share her apartment. Still a very good book. Recommended.
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Polly a feminist, researches into the life of artist Lorin Jones. She ends up with a kaleidoscopic character, seen differently by different people and depending on interpretation. Reminded me of studying literature in the 80's and being obliged to give 'marxist' or 'feminist' readings. Do students still have to do that? Even at the time it struck me as a very telescopic view.
Polly becomes unstuck as her preconceptions are challenged.
A delight. The blurb likens Lurie to Jane Austen. Maybe, as she with a very light touch reveals the duplicity of human behaviour. -
Polly has a dilemma. She is writing a book about a deceased artist known to most of the world as a talented artist, but to other family and friends who know her as an eccentric person. How will writing the book affect Polly as a person? How will the book impact her own life? This is a terrific character study.
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I do like Alison Lurie's books. I didn't mind it being dated/overly strongly opinionated. She writes with confidence and verve and I found Polly to be sympathetic (if easily swayed!). The structure of the novel worked well with the interviews adding different voices.
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I was fairly bored until about two thirds of the book and then it became unputdownable (I remembered I had felt the same with "Foreign Affairs"). As typical of Alison Lurie novels, this is a rich character study, focusing on the difficulty to apprehend anyone's full personality and the danger of prejudice in relationships.
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That would be a suck book! While you are reading you just feel like wasting your time！ when you keep reading you just wasting more!i don't know how Polly should make herself a lesbian just because you slept with an woman!or raped by a woman! While this women keep reminding you that males are lier, raper or selfish! But i think she is the most selfish one! Jean and her lesbian lover!selfish and fake person! Super feminist! Even for a 14years kids! I couldn't know how people can be like this and she was pretending to be a god!
I think for sexual it's nature or born with! Either for female or male! You can't be a lesbian that you hate all the guy in the world! Anyway in this book the women are too narrow only live in they own world!that makes me annoy so much !course I am the one who aways into charming female but I do have very close girl friends as well! And for this kind of things you should just follow your instinct! -
I used to covet these Abacus editions of Alison Lurie's books while hanging out in the Old Brompton Road branch of Waterstone's in the early 1990s. The surprising thing is that I never read any of them at the time. I found this one on Darren's shelves, complete with bus ticket bookmark (the 373, October 1992). It's still taken me a long time to get to read it, and Darren says he never did finish it.
It's six years since I read
Foreign Affairs and I need to get round to the rest of Lurie's books faster than that! I loved this. Mostly it plods along nicely (which I mean as a compliment!) and then the ending is great. I think I'm better off reading them at 40 than 20 so I'm glad I left them on the shelves for so many years. -
Everyone has a different opinion on who you are, that's what this book is all about for me. Everyone seem to see or know Lorin in a version or another. The only thing they all agree in is that she's gifted.
At the end of the book, I had a thought: Maybe we all have many versions of ourselves.
Who knows, right? How do your high school friends really see you? Your family? Your workmates? Maybe in one circle you're the good noodle, and in another you're just an asshole. :)
All in all it's a good book, it's just that I don't like this writing style, or this genre, and so I'm giving it a three. -
In truth, I remember nothing about this book except that I read it for a class and liked it enough to read another Alison Lurie, also involving Cape Cod, that I liked even better but remember nothing about, including the title. So I'm giving this one 3 stars because that seems to be the most logical thing to do.
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Read this aloud to my husband when we were dating. I'd read while he cooked. We both enjoyed it, but it wasn't the best book ever. Polly is a little irritating and we both kept groaning over the heavy-handed feminism. I think we liked it more as an experience than either of us would have if we read it to ourselves.
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The novel appears to have something to do with feminism... When I figure out what, I'll let you know. (Just kidding...kind of.) In the meantime, it's engaging enough to keep reading. The main character is irritating, but I am curious what will happen to her.
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Sort of a chatty novel, mildly interesting, and not so deep. A female art historian does research for a book about a gifted and troubled woman who is a painter, feels identified with her subject for a while, confused about her own identity and future. But, it all works out in the end.
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My favorite book by Alison Lurie. May 2011: ok, I just read it again for book club. I'm glad to say that I still liked it. Maybe I don't appreciate subtlety very much.
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OUI!!!!
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Funny satire of feminist perspectives.
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Easy and fun
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I loved this book. It was hauntingly good.
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her best book, highly recommended
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This book took a while to get going. I must say I didn’t like the narrator. She was angry about the way her life was unfolding but her choices contributed to that. She liked her work in the museum and refused to leave NYC when her husband got a job in Denver. Then her son went to stay with his father for the fall semester and she allowed her best friend, Jeanne, to move in with her. Jeanne was a drama queen who manipulated those close to her.
The writing builds slowly as people who knew Lorin, the brilliant painter, recall what she was like as a person. The complications increase as the story unfolds. It does have a satisfying ending.
I have enjoyed Laurie’s writing and look forward to reading her next book.
