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Scribner
352 pages
Product Description
<b>This “debut of rare individuality and distinction” (Hilary Mantel), told in seven chapters and peopled by girls and women caught in the act of reading, is a fascinating celebration of women in culture over the last seven centuries. </b><P>Katie Ward’s kaleidoscopic first novel immerses readers into the intimate tales behind the creation of seven portraits by artists ranging from Simone Martini to Pieter Janssens Elinga to a Flickr photographer. Like Tracy Chevalier’s <I>Girl With a Pearl Earring</i>, <I>Girl Reading</i> is evocative fiction rooted in art and, like Kate Walbert’s <I>A Short History of Women</i>, it arcs through time elucidating the changing role of women in society. <P>A young orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena. An eighteenth-century female painter completes a portrait of a deceased poetess for her lover. A Victorian medium poses with a book in one of the first photographic studios. A young woman reading in a bar catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture. And in the not-so-distant future a woman navigates the rapidly developing cyber-reality that has radically altered the way people experience art and the way they live.<P>Katie Ward’s <I>Girl Reading</i> is an incredible act of imagination and humanity that explores our points of connection, our relationship to art, the history of women, and the importance of reading. Dazzlingly inventive and prescient, <I>Girl Reading</i> is a novel that not only surprises and satisfies but also announces the career of a brilliant new writer.