Reviews for Seek My Face

The average rating for Seek My Face based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-06-26 00:00:00 Alain Villeneuve ''Don't envy me, my dear. You have your life ahead of you, and mine is behind me. You wouldn't want to be in my body a minute, there are so many aches I've learned to overlook that you would notice; you would find them unendurable. Kathryn, a young journalist from New York, visits Hope, an elderly artist residing in New England. Through the interaction of the two women and through Hope's memories, we are thrown into the stormy universe of the artists during the turbulent and world-changing decades of the 50s, the 60s and the 70s. A moving, haunting ode to womanhood, Art, perseverance and acceptance, taking place in the breathtaking scenery of New England. ''The live wet breath of the rain, the sound and stir of it in the dark, the glimpse by doorlight of its vertical rods sparkling with reflections, its towering presence stretching up out of sight into the darkness from which it falls: the beast confronts the two women. The lamps of the living room reveal only a few strides of dead lawn, plus the spangled tops of the bushes planted close to the house, soaked white spiderwebs spread on the flat-cut yew like doilies on a table.''

Review # 2 was written on 2014-02-28 00:00:00 David Bartlett This was my first experience with John Updike and far from my traditional audio boom fare of fairly mindless. What a talent, no wonder he is so well regarded. The quality of writing is absolutely superb, on par with some of the finest that I've read. There is such emotional intelligence, such marvelous attention to details, such incredible grasp of human nature, such assuredness with which he renders his characters wholly three dimensional. The story is a biography of a woman as told by herself to an interviewer and in flashbacks. Remarkable woman with a fascinating long creative life, an artist herself and wife to some very famous artists as well, particularly her first husband, heavily inspired by Jackson Pollock. To any art fan this would be an interesting read just from that aspect, but this was really just such a terrific character study. The fact that a man can write such awesomely intricate women is incredibly impressive. The reading of the book was top notch. Excellent introduction to the author. Recommended.