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Recommended Reading: 'The Crimson Portrait'
This is the first novel from Jody Shields since 2001's 'The Fig Eater,' and it's a read that is more about detail, evocation and atmosphere than it is about plot. Not that nothing happens; plenty does. A grand English estate is transformed into a military hospital for World War I soldiers with the most grotesque of facial injuries. Two women in mourning for their marriages (for very different reasons) discover new loves. An elderly doctor tries desperately to keep his young protege out of battle. And so on.
However, the plot strands and character interactions are nowhere near as charged as the descriptions of things. In fact, the entire novel feels most alive when it is living up to its title -- it is a portrait of a time and place, an entirely unexpected one filled with tensions, moments of great ugliness and great beauty and the futility so many people experience in trying to connect.
Catherine, the young, beautiful and very spoiled lady of the manor sees her exquisite home taken over by the learned Dr. McLeary, whose firm belief in stripping the place of anything reflective so that his patients can hold on to hope is countered by Bostonian Anna Coleman, whose sketches and sculptures of injuries reflect the reality of the slow progress of cosmetic surgery until a devastating war requires its practitioners to accelerate their learning. Meanwhile, the Harvard-trained yet foreign-born Dr. Kazantjian struggles to use any bits and bobs he can find (crinoline tape, wire) to fashion maxillofacial supports for his poor patients. Finally, Julian, whose ruined face will become the locus for the other characters' obsessions.
It is in the detailing of those obsessions -- Catherine's perfect objects, Anna's artist tools, McLeary's attempts to argue for the boy Artis's life -- that 'The Crimson Portrait' lifts away from its canvas and truly comes alive.
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6/30/07 6:44 AM