After a fire decimates her studio, including the seven billboard-size paintings for her next show, a young, no-name painter is left with an impossible task: recreate her art in three months-or ruin her fledgling career.
Homeless and desperate, she flees to an exclusive retreat in upstate New York famous for its outrageous revelries and glamorous artists. And notorious as the place where brilliant young artist Carey Logan-one of her idols-drowned in the lake.
But when she arrives, the retreat is a ghost of its former self. No one shares their work. No parties light up the deck. No one speaks of Carey, though her death haunts the cabins and the black lake, lurking beneath the surface like a shipwreck. As the young painter works obsessively in Carey's former studio, uncovers strange secrets and starts to fall-hard and fast-for Carey's mysterious boyfriend, it's as if she's taking her place.
But one thought shadows her every move: What really happened to Carey Logan?
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[The Young Museum announced today that Carey Logan, the artist known for her hyperrealist sculptures who committed suicide by drowning in 2008, will be the subject of a sweeping retrospective at the museum this October]***
(@GrandCentralPub, 18 June 2019, 368 pages, paperback, ARC from @AmazonUK via #AmazonVine)
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I enjoyed the way the story opens in 1996, with the unnamed narrator sees the artist collective known as Pine City for the first time, bright young things, proper artists, and exactly who the narrator wants to be. This begins her obsession with the group which only increases when Carey, considered to the most talented among them, commits suicide on film. Ten years later the narrator is now a fledgling artist who finds herself unexpectedly part of Pine City's artist retreat. I liked the narrator. The book uses first person narration from her POV. Her disappointment when she arrives at the retreat and meets the remainder of Pine City is very real. Pine City are not welcoming and none of them talk about Carey. Why? What's happened to make them stay silent about the most talented among them? I liked the way the narrator gradually unearths the truth when she starts digging around in Carey's studio, still intact. This won't suit everyone as there is a lot of information about art and the creative process. I thought this was fascinating.