I suspect many of us have had a love affair with an art object: a work that moves you, that stays with you for years, that changes the way you think and maybe even changes the direction of your life. Or, I should say, one object, that fourth character which is the planet to Sara, Marty, and Ellie’s moons. And ultimately it hinges not on relationships between people (although there is plenty of material there to armchair psychoanalyze), but on the relationship between people and objects. I think this is ultimately a book that is driven by characters, by relationships, and by the things we do to make, maintain, or break them.

Which brings me back to those four main characters. Shapiro’s The Art Forger*-but even that feels unsatisfying: the heist is hoisted in chapter one. The easiest is to lump it with the seemingly ever-growing category of “art heist book”-think Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, Rebecca Scherm’s Unbecoming, and B.A. Some of the chapters read like historical fiction, but there’s a definite lean towards “fiction” over “history.” And I suppose there is a romantic relationship subplot, but it reads as more of a dysfunctional cat-and-mouse game than anything else to me. It could be considered a mystery, but the question of who stole the painting is answered on the book jacket. Harder to pinpoint than the plot itself is the category this book fits into. It certainly has a gravitational pull on the hapless artist, collector, and curator. The painting itself has a presence, a personality, an impact on the events taking place. In fact, I said there are three main characters, but you could make a case for four: Sara, Marty, Ellie, and At the Edge of a Wood. Although they are separated by centuries, the lives of the three main characters become intimately interwoven as they orbit around the painting. Is your head spinning yet?Īs difficult as it is to make an elevator pitch of the book’s plot, the three storylines mesh fairly seamlessly as Smith swerves between them-and as they begin to crash into each other. And in 2000 Sydney, renowned art historian Ellie Shipley is curating an exhibition of 17 th century female Dutch artists when she learns that two versions of At the Edge of a Wood are traveling to her gallery: the original, and the forgery that she herself painted in 1957.

In 1957 Manhattan, the painting is stolen from the home of Marty de Groot, whose family has owned the work for 300 years. In 1637 Amsterdam, artist Sara de Vos diverges from her training as a still-life painter to paint the landscape At the Edge of a Wood, an enigmatic work she makes as she mourns her daughter’s death. This is a book that’s hard to describe succinctly. Welcome back to SAM Book Club! Today we’re here to discuss Dominic Smith’s newest novel, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos.

The last painting of sara devos