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[Somehow, I haven't gotten out of the habit of posting book reviews, when I write them, on the first of the month, even though Reflection's Edge is no longer publishing new issues. The book I'm talking about is published by Fireship Press and is available on Amazon here.]
In a word, charming.
I've edited another of Inbinder's books - a Henry James mashup called Daisy Miller, Zombie Killer* - which is how I came to read The Flower to the Painter (as a publishing proof; I haven't had the benefit of seeing the printed product and can't speak to the binding). Something that attracts me to Inbinder's pastiches is their double consciousness - an un-cynical love for the source material, coupled with an awareness of the shortcomings of the era's gender politics.
It's like he's trying to resolve the classic armchair time traveler's dilemma - you'd love to be able to escape into an idyllic past, but in the past they would have hated and feared you and all you stand for, and you'd hate and fear them right back. I've had to set down a number of Regency-era books over the years because of an author's vocal opinions on "the weaker sex" and their foibles, conniving, innocence, cunning, and general unsuitability. Inbinder returns some of that escapist pleasure to feminists by providing a degree of comeuppance or I-told-you-so, while at the same time giving his characters' own thoughts about gender and homosexuality some measure of historical credulity. It's a difficult balance, and I'm impressed Inbinder so often manages it.
The Flower to the Painter's first-person narrator is a penniless American of good name who spends most of the novel in Europe, masquerading as a young male artist to try to improve her financial situation. Marcia exhibits unusual frankness for a narrator of the era, both in her evaluations of other characters and in her discussions of bodily functions; one imagines how Vanity Fair might have sounded if told by Becky Sharp (presuming Miss Sharp did not dissemble, as she likely would).
The first 30 pages or so are an extended infodump to set up the otherwise implausible circumstances and mechanics of Marcia's masquerade, but after that the book settles into a comfortable and much more stylistically assured groove, from which Inbinder has the leisure to explore the social mores of the day (some of which are still with us). This he does with considerable intelligence and delicacy, not to mention dry humor. And of course the requisite Twelfth Night bisexual romances, carried out with a sweetness reminiscent of Jack Lemon's character in Some Like it Hot, with a similar use of cross-dressing to stand in for other types of closeting. (I leave it to the reader to discover whether the girl can get the girl, or whether the boy can get the not-boy.)
Perhaps the highest recommendation of The Flower to the Painter is that it is historical fiction that doesn't seem frozen in time; the characters are self-identified progressives, following the newest art, technology, and science, and speculating on the changes that may follow - or even crusading for them. It's a book full of Stephen Maturins, a book about ideas that nevertheless is light reading, and one that only improves with one's knowledge of painters and poets.
* Not yet released as of time this review was posted.
In a word, charming.
I've edited another of Inbinder's books - a Henry James mashup called Daisy Miller, Zombie Killer* - which is how I came to read The Flower to the Painter (as a publishing proof; I haven't had the benefit of seeing the printed product and can't speak to the binding). Something that attracts me to Inbinder's pastiches is their double consciousness - an un-cynical love for the source material, coupled with an awareness of the shortcomings of the era's gender politics.
It's like he's trying to resolve the classic armchair time traveler's dilemma - you'd love to be able to escape into an idyllic past, but in the past they would have hated and feared you and all you stand for, and you'd hate and fear them right back. I've had to set down a number of Regency-era books over the years because of an author's vocal opinions on "the weaker sex" and their foibles, conniving, innocence, cunning, and general unsuitability. Inbinder returns some of that escapist pleasure to feminists by providing a degree of comeuppance or I-told-you-so, while at the same time giving his characters' own thoughts about gender and homosexuality some measure of historical credulity. It's a difficult balance, and I'm impressed Inbinder so often manages it.
The Flower to the Painter's first-person narrator is a penniless American of good name who spends most of the novel in Europe, masquerading as a young male artist to try to improve her financial situation. Marcia exhibits unusual frankness for a narrator of the era, both in her evaluations of other characters and in her discussions of bodily functions; one imagines how Vanity Fair might have sounded if told by Becky Sharp (presuming Miss Sharp did not dissemble, as she likely would).
The first 30 pages or so are an extended infodump to set up the otherwise implausible circumstances and mechanics of Marcia's masquerade, but after that the book settles into a comfortable and much more stylistically assured groove, from which Inbinder has the leisure to explore the social mores of the day (some of which are still with us). This he does with considerable intelligence and delicacy, not to mention dry humor. And of course the requisite Twelfth Night bisexual romances, carried out with a sweetness reminiscent of Jack Lemon's character in Some Like it Hot, with a similar use of cross-dressing to stand in for other types of closeting. (I leave it to the reader to discover whether the girl can get the girl, or whether the boy can get the not-boy.)
Perhaps the highest recommendation of The Flower to the Painter is that it is historical fiction that doesn't seem frozen in time; the characters are self-identified progressives, following the newest art, technology, and science, and speculating on the changes that may follow - or even crusading for them. It's a book full of Stephen Maturins, a book about ideas that nevertheless is light reading, and one that only improves with one's knowledge of painters and poets.
* Not yet released as of time this review was posted.
