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A literary masterpiece driven by the twisted relatiosnhip two women had with a depressed, emotional artist Sep 18, 2006 (30 of 45 found this helpful)
In her latest masterpiece, Los Angeles-area author Janet Fitch paints a vivid image of love lost among the backdrop of the 1980's punk rock scene. The novel is the story of Bakersfield runaway Josie Tyrell, who carved out her own alternative piece of paradise in the city of angels with her lover, Michael. Josie, a twenty-year old art model, independent film actress, and punk rock groupie, found love and beautiful peace with a well-heeled Harvard drop-out-turned-artist. In the opening chapters, Josie is awakened by a call from the police, asking her to identify her lover's body, found in a fleabag desert motel with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
"What happens to the dream when the dreamer is gone?" In the aftermath of Michael's suicide, Josie re-examines their relationship, from her lover's rocky moods to his secretive relationship with his mother to the wonder and pain of their sexual relationship. Josie gets entangled in a love/hate relationship with Michael's mother, an internationally renowned concert pianist. The two would like to quite literally murder one another, but when they both lose the man who was the focal point of each woman's life, neither has anything to live for. The "other woman" is the closest tie each one has to their lost love. Michael's death triggers a release of secret facets of his self, sides that were buried deep in his relationship with both his mother and his lover. Josie fiercely respected his privacy and artistic proclivites when he was alive, so she is shocked by her discoveries of his true self.
Paint it Black delivers a vivid, descriptive experience. The plot is driven by cogitation and observations, by intense sensory and emotional encounters. The dialogue is exquisite, but it plays second fiddle to the unspoken conversations, memories, jealousies, and pain of the twisted relationship two women had with a depressed young man. The ending of the novel is pure genius, a subtle but unexpected turn for Josie, one that provides the possibility of future personal peace for the protagonist.
As in Fitch's first best-seller, White Oleander, a controlling and edgily homicidal maternal figure plays a central role in the plot. (And, despite other reviewers' propensity to overlook this fact, Paint it Black is actually Fitch's third novel. She published a brilliant young-adult coming-of-age story called Kicks in the mid-ninties.) As a reader, I enjoyed the novel for its literary profundity, but also for its unique setting, for the experience of being consumed by the alternate reality of drug- and alcohol-fueled eighties punk music and art.
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Magnificent Work of Art!! Oct 13, 2006 (30 of 45 found this helpful)
Janet Fitch has a rare gift to take words and turn them into sentences that amaze and astound. She's an alchemist in the truest sense of the word: She transmutes the alphabet into mountains of pure, priceless gold.
Forget the plot, you can just read a page and sit back and admire her gift for metaphor, prose and description. I have never read a book with such shimmering, unique, mouth-watering prose. I wanted to eat the book up, devour the story and digest it until it became a part of me. I wanted to melt it down and shoot it into my veins so it could linger in my heart and bloodstream forever. It's that kind of rare book. I marked countless passages for re-reading.
I fell into the story and became Josie, almost literally. I wanted to move into her dark little house with the miniature circus and paintings on the peeling walls. That is an extraordinary gift: to create characters so real and profound, you escape reality when you're reading about them. I'd read and totally forget time and place. I'd disappear into the story and not want to return to my life.
I hated to finish the book and cried when it was all said and done. The plot was excellent. Josie is a survivor and no one, not even the evil Meredith could bring her down... As I've said before, I don't do book reports, just state how I feel about books. This one is now in my top ten list of all time and will definitely NOT get loaned out....ever!!
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Great writer- but unbelieveable subject and rambling passages... Oct 7, 2006 (26 of 33 found this helpful)
Wow, what a disappointment! I adored Fitch's 'White Oleander' and was so looking forward to her next offering. Unfortunately, I was sadly let down by this endeavor and skipped over entire passages because so much felt redundant and repeated. Yes, we KNOW (and were told and told and TOLD) how much the main character was obsessed with her boyfriend who killed himself (because he was spoiled and weak) and he was very unlikeably portrayed- so why should I care? His mother seemed a backround farce and not very complex- more of a typical neurotic creative. We know how much Josie liked her 'voddy' (incredibly annoying how much that stupid phrase was repeated) and pills because SHE was weak- though Fitch tried to make her out as a survivor I wasn't convinced of it at all. Also, I was disappointed that Fitch did the typical 'female escape route' of portraying her character as so much about her looks and being attractive. How many times did we have to hear about her physicality? That's really all she had to offer which can not carry a whole story. Josie whined and moaned the whole duration in a repetitive 'woe is me' fashion, but she kept landing modeling jobs and (paid!) movie roles with a bunch of people continuously telling her how great she was! Very unoriginal and unrealistic as she was only 20 years old with no education and a played out white trash upbringing. She also had so many supposed associates that were 'in the know' cool. Yawn. Where was the real struggle here? A boyfriend killing himself when you are 20 years old is painful as hell, but you still have plenty of time ahead of you to live life and find love. What if she was 45 instead? Now THERE is a subject more worth reading about. When will a plain, average character be interestingly portrayed as rising up above her upbringing in a novel? If they don't have the 'special' looks they are screwed, obviously. Fitch just gave in to the same 'ol, same 'ol and it was quite a rambling, endless let down. But with her talent, I'm sure that she has some more great writing in her, this just wasn't it.
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Staggering letdown Oct 7, 2006 (21 of 28 found this helpful)
As someone who revelled in and recommended "White Oleander", hardly able to wait for Fitch's next novel, I am astounded by how dime-store tawdry and dumb-downed "Paint It Black" is. One almost feels compelled to ask "Is this the same author?" And what did her publisher and editor think when she submitted this? A bizarre freefall from Janet Fitch's previous accomplishment.
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I wanted to like this book so badly... Oct 31, 2006 (18 of 23 found this helpful)
...because I thought White Oleandar was brilliant. But this book? Not so much. I would not be surprised if Paint it Black were something Fitch wrote before she got her bestseller published. It felt much less fully realized. I found the text to be sprawling, unedited, self-indulgent. I generally have no problem with unreliable and/or unlikable narrators, but this one was more tiring than she was menacing. The whole book was written in one note, so I, too, agree with the "flat" description. I found the characters (the distant, brilliant, rich mother; the sassy best friend; the beautiful, troubled boyfriend) to be very stock and borderline cliche. I absolutely savored every word of Fitch's first book; reading this one, unfortunately, was like returning to a restaurant where you'd had the most amazing creme brulee of your life, only to find it cold and runny the second time you ordered it.