French Girl with Mother: A Novel

by Norman Ollestad

Overview

"Finely wrought; Ollestad builds a delicate tension between the characters, exposing their raw desire and exploring the concept of artistic inspiration...A quietly tense and absorbing read." --Kirkus

French Girl with Mother is a provocative, propulsive thriller that marries the spirit of James Salter with a hint of Patricia Highsmith and the velocity of The Art Forger.

Nathan is a young artist traveling across Europe in search of the emotional fire that has been missing from his work. He's been deemed by his mentors and critics as technically skillful but uninspired --criticisms he fears to be true. On a Paris street, he witnesses the volatile breakup of a young French woman and her beau. Nathan pursues a meeting with the woman and it very quickly becomes evident that her provocative charisma and scathing beauty just may conjure the electricity he has been seeking for his work. So when the woman invites him to her parents' crumbling, centuries-old chateau in the country to allow him to sketch her, he accepts, knowing that this proposition is both ill advised and thrilling.

Once enveloped by this isolated estate, a door opens to a world Nathan is not prepared for. The arrival of the young woman's family--her mother, a volatile, voracious former ballerina, her father, a mysterious businessman with secrets of his own, and her uncle, who might be trafficking in art forgeries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640090125
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	10/10/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Norman Ollestad is the author of the 2009 bestseller Crazy For The Storm: A Memoir Of Survival. Ollestad's writing has received extraordinary praise from The New York Times to Entertainment Weekly, and has won admiration from esteemed voices including Russell Banks, Jim Harrison, Susan Cheever, and Carolyn See, and invited comparisons to Tobias Wolff and Jon Krakauer.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for French Girl with Mother

"A unique, atmospheric literary thriller with a strong sense of place that will have appeal for fans of both Scandinavian crime fiction and psychological thrillers." --Booklist

"Finely wrought; Ollestad builds a delicate tension between the characters, exposing their raw desire and exploring the concept of artistic inspiration...A quietly tense and absorbing read."--Kirkus

Praise for Crazy for the Storm

"As much a thriller as a memoir . . . gorgeously written, perfectly controlled." --Carolyn See

"Breathtaking...A portrait of a father's consuming love for his son, Crazy for the Storm will keep you up late into the night." --Washington Post Book World

"Crazy for the Storm is an absolutely compelling book which I read in one long sitting. The fact that it's true made me shudder, but then Norman Ollestad is a fine writer and every detail is convincing." --Jim Harrison

"Tragic and exotic ...[with] short, punchy chapters and...nonstop emphasis on adrenaline-fueled excitement." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"Crazy for the Storm is a wonderful book, extremely moving and beautifully written in a spare yet richly evocative style.." --The Telegraph

"Cinematic and personal . . . Ollestad's insights into growing up in a broken home and adolescence in southern California are as engrossing as the story of his trip down the mountain." --Chicago Tribune

"Riveting." --Entertainment Weekly

"The memoir is as much about a father-son relationship as it is a survival story...Ollestad says his father's life philosophy about surfing and skiing - knowing there's always a place to go and find peace, clear your mind - got him down the mountain and through life." --USA Today

"An elegant memoir as well as a transformative coming-of-age tale. When he leaves his father's limp body behind on the icy plateau--giving it a final kiss and caress as it's claimed by the snow--Ollestad takes his first perilous steps not just into survival, but into adulthood." --New York Post

"A page-turning adventure tale . . . and a meditation on manhood." --Los Angeles Magazine

"At times beautiful, at times heart-wrenching, Crazy for the Storm is a commanding read--a tale that proves the power of the human spirit can rise against any challenge, and a father's legacy can be more than he imagines." --BookPage

"A heart-stopping adventure that ends in tragedy and in triumph, a love story that fearlessly explores the bond between a father and son and what it means to lead a life without limits." --Susan Cheever

From the Publisher

08/15/2016
The protagonist of Ollestad’s ambitious but flawed novel (following his 2009 memoir, Crazy for the Storm) is a struggling artist dabbling in danger for the sake of his art. Once hailed by the famous painter Ed Ruscha, Nathan Woods is now adrift in Paris; an old mentor back home told him, after bland reviews of his latest show, that he had “too much college and not enough life.” Roaming the streets looking for inspiration, Nathan meets Anais, a volatile young French woman, and agrees to follow her to her family’s chateau. There they begin a fraught erotic relationship, which ignites Nathan’s creative juices. He begins to sketch her. When Anais’s mother and father arrive at the chateau, Nathan senses that things are going to get weird. And they do. The whole family keeps secrets: erotic secrets, as well as business secrets, and they inflict pain on one another in a way that both repulses Nathan and invigorates his work. In addition, Anais’s father and an uncle in the chateau next door are involved in smuggling works of art to the Middle East, and when the FBI shows up with an ultimatum, Nathan is caught up in a scheme that has him skiing over the Alps with a couple of Egon Schiele paintings, threatening his career and his life. Ollestad tries to plumb the depths of art and the nature of inspiration, and he attempts to describe a great deal of sexual congress in emotional, affecting terms, but with little success. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

2016-07-19
A young American artist gets tangled in the erotic web of a Frenchwoman and her family.Despite his technical precision, Nathan’s lack of creative vision as a painter limits his success. Struggling to find inspiration, he treks through Europe in search of a muse. When he crosses paths with Anaïs and she invites him back to her family’s country chateau to paint her, his vision of her leads not only to bold sketches and portraits, but also to the start of an intense sexual relationship. After a few days, Anaïs’ parents join them at the chateau. Her mother, Sophie, is coolly critical of Nathan and his relationship with Anaïs; nevertheless, when asked to paint a portrait of Sophie, he finds himself attracted to her. Drawn to the undercurrent of sexual competition between mother and daughter, he works on his own masterwork in secret while Anaïs’ father and uncle pull him into an art forgery scheme that attracts the interest of authorities. All of this, of course, leads to tragedy, and Nathan must choose whether to save his paintings or his relationship. The first half of the novel is finely wrought; Ollestad (Crazy for the Storm, 2009) builds a delicate tension between the characters, exposing their raw desire and exploring the concept of artistic inspiration. Despite a few instances of overly complicated writing (for example: “Was she a goldmine? Or a maze that ends in a cul-de-sac or at a cliff?”), the seeds of discord are expertly sown. Once the plot expands to include the forgery scheme and all of the drama that accompanies it, however, the novel loses that careful precision and descends into the realm of melodrama. A quietly tense and absorbing read when the emphasis is on the “erotic” rather than the “thriller.

Kirkus Reviews