...
The story
The story is told by Ethan Muller, who is an art dealer in New York. In one of his fathers flats the tenant has disappeared and all that is left behind is boxes and boxes of drawings. These pictures are all drawn on individual sheets of paper but they all link up to ... Read review
Ethan Muller is struggling to establish his reputation as a dealer in the cut-throat world ... more
of contemporary art when he is alerted to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: in a decaying New York slum an elderly tenant has disappeared leaving behind a stag...
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Advantages: Excellent story, well paced Disadvantages: None
...picked it up myself as the brown cover doesn’t really stand out. It has a little sticker on the front that says it is part of Richard & Judy’s book club.
=== The story ===
The story is told by Ethan Muller, who is an art dealer in New York. In one of his fathers flats the tenant has disappeared and all that is left behind is boxes and boxes of drawings. These pictures are all drawn on individual sheets of paper ... ...of art. Ethan takes the pictures to his gallery and then tries to discover who the artist is. He gets help from a retired detective who sees the central piece of the art in a newspaper and recognises that the faces on the cherubs are young boys who were all murdered a long time before. When this is revealed the art shoots up even more in value but someone wants Ethan to stop and sends him threatening notes, but will Ethan manage to uncover the truth ... more
I got this book for my birthday, and I’m glad I did as I probably wouldn’t have picked it up myself as the brown cover doesn’t really stand out. It has a little sticker on the front that says it is part of Richard & Judy’s book club.
The story
The story is told by Ethan Muller, who is an art dealer in New York. In one of his fathers flats the tenant has disappeared and all that is left behind is boxes and boxes of drawings. These pictures are all drawn on individual sheets of paper but they all link up to make a huge picture, they are strange but brilliant pieces of art. Ethan takes the pictures to his gallery and then tries to discover who the artist is. He gets help from a retired detective who sees the central piece of the art in a newspaper and recognises that the faces on the cherubs are young boys who were all murdered a long time before. When this is revealed the art shoots up even more in value but someone wants Ethan to stop and sends him threatening notes, but will Ethan manage to uncover the truth and find the mysterious artist?
My opinion
I did really enjoy this book and the story in it although I felt the back of the book made it out to be much more of a thriller than it actually is. Rather than being filled with violence and dead bodies it much more of sinister story and really descriptive read. It is told by Ethan, who comes from a privileged background but who doesn’t get on with his father and rebelled against him a lot until he found his love of art and became an art dealer. He appears to have become disillusioned though and as he gets more drawn in to the investigation he forgets all about his art gallery and also his relationship with his girlfriend Marilyn. He becomes a much more likeable character as the book goes on as you learn about his past and how he has ended up the way he is because at first he comes across as quite arrogant and spoilt and has no interest in helping the detective because he worries it might devalue the art.
Throughout the book there are what the author calls interludes which start back in 1847 and tells the story of the Mullers, generation by generation, so we learn about Ethan’s heritage and it gives a better understanding of why his father is the way he is and it unravels some of the mysteries.
Although it is not a particularly fast paced book it is written so well that you want to keep on reading to find out what happens. The interludes are placed well so that you uncover information to piece together what is happening in the main story and these stories are told just as well with great descriptions and gives us more understanding, as the reader, of other people in the book as the main part is told just from Ethan’s point of view. The story flows really well and all the loose ends are tied up well at the end and left me with a satisfying conclusion.
I also found it a nice change not to have a detective or professional investigator as the main lead for the book. Although there are professionals involved it is not heavily written into the story and so there aren’t police procedures or details to really follow.
If you enjoy a really well written story with a sinister side to it then I think you will really like The Brutal Art and I highly recommend you reading it. The author has written a couple of other books and I will look out for these as I enjoyed this one so much.
Advantages: Great characters, a real page turner Disadvantages: A bit disappointing towards the end, lacks substance
...both brilliant and highly disturbing. The artist seems to have abandoned his drawings, and Ethan takes it upon himself to display and sell the drawings in his gallery to much success. However, when he receives a phone call from a retired policeman about the content of the drawings themselves, they both realise that Ethan could be sitting on the missing pieces of a mystery involving the deaths of small boys during the 1960's and 1970's. The more Ethan ... ...the more danger he appears to be in, whilst the mystery seems to involve him more than he could ever have imagined. '''My Thoughts'''
========= There are two stories that are interwoven throughout, Ethan is telling his story of what happened when he discovered the paintings and the mystery surrounding them and the author, whilst every so often there is an interlude which relates the Muller family history, right from when the first Muller came over ...
burtybookworm 05.05.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Brutal Art - Jesse Kellerman
Advantages: Brilliant, gripping book Disadvantages: You will need to break off to sleep!
...I'll try to explain what the book's about, but it's complicated, so bear with me, OK? There's a New York art dealer called Ethan Muller, who's fast becoming disillusioned with the artists he shows, the art collectors he sells to and the whole art world. He has a very complicated, not to say twisted, relationship with his father, with whom he mainly communicates via his father's long-term friend and employee, Tony. One day Tony tells him he's found ... ...reluctantly agrees to look at the pictures and is stunned by what he finds: a "map of reality as [the artist] perceived it" is how Kellerman describes it. Literally hundreds and hundreds of drawings, all connected. And right at the centre, the faces of five boys, represented as cherubs. Who drew these amazing pictures? When? Why? And how significant is it that one of the "cherubs" was murdered many years before? In this current-day mystery, a retired ...
Bitchqueenofneworleans 02.04.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Brutal Art - Jesse Kellerman
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