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    Forgery of Venus
    Forgery of Venus
    Forgery of Venus
    Audiobook10 hours

    Forgery of Venus

    Written by Michael Gruber

    Narrated by Eric Conger

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Chaz Wilmot makes his living cranking out old-master parodies for ads and magazine covers. When he's offered a job restoring a Venetian palace fresco, he is at first, skeptical—he immediately sees it is more a forgery than a restoration. But he is soon seduced by the challenge and throws himself into the work, doing the job brilliantly.

    This feat attracts the attention of Werner Krebs, a shady art dealer who becomes Wilmot's friend and patron. Wilmot is suddenly working with a fervor he hasn't felt in years, but without warning, he finds himself reliving moments from his past—not as memories but as if they are happening all over again. Soon, he believes he can travel back to the 17th century where he lived as the Spanish artist Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velazquez. Wilmot begins to fantasize that as Velazquez, he has created a masterpiece and when the painting actually turns up, he doesn't know if he painted it or if he imagined the whole thing.

    Little by little, Wilmot enters a secret world of gangsters, greed and murder, with his mystery patron at the center of it all, either as the mastermind behind a plot to forge a painting worth hundred of millions, or as the man who will save Wilmot from obscurity and madness.

    Miraculously inventive, this book cements Gruber's reputation as one of the most imaginative and gifted writers of our time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 1, 2008
    ISBN9780061632624
    Forgery of Venus
    Author

    Michael Gruber

    New York Times bestselling author Michael Gruber is the author of five acclaimed novels. He lives in Seattle.

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    Reviews for Forgery of Venus

    4/5

    29 ratings25 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The plot of Michael Gruber's The Forgery of Venus seems a bit convoluted, but I found it to be a very satisfying read. When talented painter Chaz Wilmot gets involved in a dangerous, but financially lucrative plot to forge a famous painting by a Spanish master, his life and his sanity are at risk. The story begins with Chaz mysteriously delivering a CD to an old college classmate, and then disappearing. On the CD are hours of recordings of Chaz, telling a story that becomes stranger by the minute. As his classmate begins to listen to Chaz's tale, he begins to wonder whether Chaz has lost his mind. Chaz, a very talented painter, has never made much of his talent. When Chaz agrees to participate in a psychological drug study, he begins to hallucinate that he is living the life of a famous Spanish painter, Velazquez, who lived in the 1600s. A shady European art dealer gets wind of Chaz's hallucinations and offers him a job he can't refuse forging a famous Velazquez painting. Soon, Chaz is consumed with the painting and begins having difficulty telling reality from his hallucinations.I probably picked this book up because it seems to have a lot of the elements I like in a suspense novel: art, Nazi art theft, and history. But Gruber also incorporates some unique features that made this one stand out from the others. I loved how the story was written as if it was a transcription from a recording. It sounds just the way someone (who is slightly nuts) might tell a story verbally. Gruber also transitioned Chaz from the present into his hallucinations so seamlessly, it takes a second to realize what is happening, which makes it seem so real. And his descriptions of Velazquez's life are so vivid. I also found myself stopping and trying to figure out what was real and what was just a hallucination, which also made it seem more realistic. The one disappointment was that we don't really know how or why Chaz seemed to inhabit Velazquez's life, which I thought was one of the most intriguing aspects of the story.
    • 4/5
      This is the second Gruber book I've read in the last year - I read "The Book of Air and Shadows" this summer - and based on these two books, I can't wait for his next one. (After reading "The Book of Air and Shadows" I thought I would read his earlier books, but after I read their plot summaries, I decided they didn't sound as interesting to me as his two latest works have proved to be.)"The Forgery of Venus" is a fast paced suspense novel set in New York, Venice, Madrid, Rome, and Bavaria. I did not want to put the book down as I followed protagonist Chaz Wilmot through his experiences - some real, some imagined, but the reader and Chaz are never quite sure until the very end - in the underground world of high end art forgery. If you are interested in the big money art scene in NYC and Europe, the underground world of forgers, or you just like a novel that leaves you guessing until the end, you should like "The Forgery of Venus"
    • 4/5
      As an artist and history buff, I loved this book! Just tore through it. The thriller/mystery aspects of seemed to be almost unnecessary, but then I guess it sells books. Towards the end I got lost in the hall of mirrors, but maybe it'll make sense on the second reading. And I will read it again -- it was that good. Much better than Book of Air and Shadows. As in that book, we have a disturbed main character, but this time I could relate to him. Maybe it's because I'm an artist (Venus) and not a sex addict (Air and Shadows). And this time, the man's emotional problems were central to the story, whereas in Air and Shadows, it seemed totally beside the point. Gruber is a wonderful writer, and we agree about art and politics, it seems, so that helps. Don't know if I would've enjoyed it so much if I wasn't an artist and hadn't studied art history. I would've enjoyed this story if it was just a time travel piece while under the influence. Hell, I've read plenty of time travel stories with much flimsier underpinnings. I didn't need a mystery/thriller to drive it along, really. And considering the "real" story is left up to our imaginations, I wonder if it was, again, just beside the point. It's almost like Gruber sets out to write a book of a certain type and sticks to it even after it becomes a different sort of story. Or, as in Air and Shadows, perhaps he's trying to write in mongrel genre, the Time travel/ mystery thriller potboiler. Personally, I find his insights and erudition more than enough to make him worth reading. I don't need him to pretend to be John Grisham, too. (Never read Grisham, but you catch my drift.)
    • 2/5
      Where to start? The Forgery of Venus is not poorly written. The pacing is good. Art is described well. The concepts are a step above the average mystery. So what's wrong with it? In a word, Chaz Wilmot, the main character. He's just not interesting. Neither as a sane man nor an insane one. He comes across as whiny and unsympathetic. He never roused my interest much less took me to a place of suspended belief. Therefor, the flow of the story never took off but drug on until I was agitated with the book. The Forgery of Venus falls short of being an engrossing read.
    • 4/5
      Reminds me a bit of The Magus, both for the cool ideas it plays with and for the creakiness of the basic plot. But as with the Magus, I find myself willing to suspend my skepticism and just enjoy the play.
    • 4/5
      This was a GREAT literary thriller. The main character is asked to restore (or reproduce, really) a famous painting. This one step sends him on a dizzying spiral into a confusing world - is he creating genuine art or fakes? Has he lost his own self in his quest for art (and money). If you are intersted in art, art history and the history of art forgery you will really like this one. Also, for fans of Ian Pears Jonathan Argyll series - this is a must!
    • 1/5
      This review refers to an unabridged audio edition of the book.I found this in my library right before a recent trip, and thought it sounded like something I would love...art, history, intrigue. My trip was approximately 12 hours of driving, and I am afraid that this book made it seem twice as long.What a disappointment. No character in this book engaged me. I didn't like them, I didn't dislike them...I just didn't care about them, or what happened to them. I felt the author just repeated the same passages in slightly different settings over and over (and over) again. Even the historical flashbacks to another painter in another time were disappointing. I did not feel transported, and I did not feel that I learned anything about the time period.Interestingly, when I clicked on "will I like this book" on LibraryThing, it suggested that, "yes, you will love it." My general reading interests completely fit the profile of someone who would, indeed, enjoy this book. Obviously, profiling has its limits.
    • 4/5
      Chaz Wilmot is a talented artist, the son of a slightly less talented artist, and is obsessed with the idea of wasting his talent and thus doing exactly that. In addition to the paltry sums he brings in with commercial work he is a paid participant in the trial of a completely legal but somewhat psychotropic drug hoping to identify the roots of human creativity. With two ex-wives and three children to support -- one of whom is desperately ill -- he desperately needs money and when he's offered a huge sum to recreate a frescoed ceiling in Venice, the offer is just too good to refuse.What follows is a finely crafted, intricately woven novel of psychological suspense that I found completely absorbing. While at certain stages I felt that I could have used an art history lesson to get full enjoyment out of the book -- and I'm sure that readers with more knowledge of art than I have will reap an extra dimension -- ultimately that was beside the point and I found myself thoroughly enjoying the ride I'd signed on for.With the only other Michael Gruber novel I've read being The Book of Air and Shadows, I will definitely be checking out more of this author's backlist.
    • 4/5
      Summary: Charles Wilmot Jr. is an artist, a painter. He makes his living producing magazine covers and other commercial pieces in the style of the Old Masters, but does not particularly have his own voice. Until he enters a medical study, in which the experimental drug seems to send him back in time - specifically, into the life of the 17th century painter Diego Velasquez. As he continues these vivid flashbacks, he becomes less certain about what is real in his life, although his talent, his ability to paint like the Old Masters, remains with him. Some restoration work that he's done on a fresco bring him to the attention of a Werner Krebs, a German art merchant, who makes him an unbelievable offer: he wants Wilmot to forge a Velasquez. But Wilmot is still losing time to his hallucinations of the past, and so when a lost Velasquez does in fact materialize, how is he to know whether it's real, or whether he painted it? Review: My summary gives away more of the plot than I usually prefer to, but in this case, I think it's for the best. This book is a long, very slow build to the point where any noticeable action really starts. Its main "hook" doesn't come until relatively near the end - maybe 3/4 of the way through? - but once Gruber finally pulls the trigger and the pieces start falling into place, I was hooked, and good. But before that point, I found this book extremely slow going. If I were the sort that found it easier to abandon books unfinished, I doubt I would have made it past disc 2 or 3. (We'll get to my reasons why in a bit.) And I did in fact get stalled out, and didn't listen to any of it for over a week. But I persevered, and am definitely glad I did so.My problems with the first half (at least) of the book were two-fold. First, I did not particularly like Wilmot as a person, nor as a protagonist. He's prickly and arrogant and self-involved, and it made it harder for me to care about the fact that he wasn't selling paintings or expressing himself as an artist or didn't have a good relationship with his ex-wife or whatever. That's probably related to my second problem with this book, namely, there is a lot of musing about art, and painting, and the modern state of painting, and what it means to be creative, and why we will pay millions of dollars to have a legitimate Old Master to hang on our walls but if someone is painting in that exact same style nowadays they're a derivative hack, and the importance of forgeries, etc., etc. Each of the times that Wilmot goes off on a rambling tangent about art (and he is a rambly and tangent-prone narrator), I thought that he brought up an interesting idea, but then he proceeded to harp on it past the point where my interest waned. Someone more versed in art, art history, and modern art might have more patience with these parts than I did, but I thought they made the first half of the book drag, without a corresponding amount of action to back them up.But the good news is that even though the whole front part of the book is relatively action-free - sure, stuff happens, but there's no real sense of conflict other than Wilmot vs. the Monumental Task of Wilmot Getting His Shit Together - the way that everything falls together in the end makes up for a lot of slow going in the beginning. By the end of the book, the pieces really do all slot together in this terrifying and fascinating way. Gruber is not shy about messing with the minds of his characters nor his readers, and the questions about how one can prove anything about their past or themselves when they can't trust their own memories, or even their own perceptions, is a mind-trip of the highest order. There's a great level of tension and paranoia that's the result of the slow build in the beginning of the book, and once it's set, it doesn't let up until well after the last page. I was still thinking about this book, the ending of this book, well after I'd finished it... not a bad trick for a book I initially wasn't sure I wanted to finish at all. 3.5 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: Tough one. I think fans of modern fiction, particularly those with an interest in art, a fondness for stories with unreliable narrators, or those who occasionally like to have their fiction mess with their minds, would be the best audience for this book. Just be prepared for a slow and prolonged first and second (and third... and fourth?) act.
    • 4/5
      Michael Gruber is one of those rare writers who do not hesitate to surprise the reader with some strange and unexpected twist: the ingenious Book of Air and Shadows had an Olympian weight lifter as the hero of a delicate literary mystery.This novel concerns a priceless and newly discovered Velazquez Venus which is both a forgery, since it is painted by 21st Century artist Chaz Wilmot, yet not a forgery, since at the time of painting the artist was possessed by the spirit of Velazquez. Not quite as good perhaps as its predecessor but never-the-less The Forgery of Venus is an educated, informative, intriguing and interesting literary novel.
    • 5/5
      Fabulously entertaining.
      About the forgery of a lost Velazquez and the artist eventually going mad. Very smartly written
    • 4/5
      Loved the book. If you like the plot twists and time shifts of the ABC hit "Lost" and have a background (or at least a good survey course) in art history and the grand masters of the quattrocentro period in Spain and Italy; you will enjoy Michael Gruber's newest...The Forgery of Venus: A Novel. Told from Chaz Wilmot's account of insanity and time travel in CDs left for his college room mate, Gruber builds the aura of insanity and looming threat with subtle and not so subtle layers. I really liked Chaz Wilmot's "voice" Felt he was believable as a very intense artist with a very loose grip on reality. Overall, a good, absorbing read with a nicely excecuted plot.
    • 4/5
      Tales of temporal bi-location and the madness it often brings are a lot of fun, add old masters paintings and forgery and you have a pretty interesting novel. If one doesn’t clutter it up with a lot of ax-grinding or preaching that is and thankfully Gruber does neither. The tale is presented as a fait accompli as related from the main character to someone else who basically presents this weird story to us. His narrative at the start and end of the book is sufficiently different from that of the main narrative to make it work. He’s disinterested in the protagonist, surprised by getting this story dumped on him and glad to be left out of it largely.Without going into a lot of plot details, basically this is a tale of insanity and how an artist can deal with it by channeling it into art. There is also an element of the metaphysical in exactly what makes him able to paint the way he does. It wasn’t presented in a gawd-awful way and so didn’t annoy. It served as a teasing mystery all on its own and provided some ambiguity in which to think. Well-written and apparently well researched as well, not that I’m an expert, but from what I could google, Gruber appears to have done his homework.Now the plot details. Don’t read further if you want to get the most out of this novel.Chaz Wilmot is the son of Charles Wilmot and he’s not happy about it. Dad is well known as a commercial painter (sort of a second rate Norman Rockwell) and according to Chaz, wasted his talent. A few early works of extreme emotion and depth exist, but CW Senior chose to ignore that in pursuit of ready money. Not that he felt he would need it long as he stayed married a rich woman who would no doubt let him at her fortune. She doesn’t and he realizes he has to keep churning out smarmy magazine covers and private portraits. So instead of learning from this and embracing his greater talent, Chaz becomes a second rate hack even worse than his father. He works for magazines and turns his back on any promise his one or two small shows might have produced. This is a major theme within this story. The father son relationship and all that can twist and distort it. The hypocritical and largely empty-hearted art world and how it has changed to a profit-making enterprise not a creative or expressive outlet. He longs for the days of the old masters where one could indulge in a specific vision as an exploration of the craft. Even though these had to check up with what a patron wanted (often kings or popes), he feels this is more honest that the grasping art dealers and auctions of today. He ruins one marriage with children and then another. He does a lot of drugs. He feels self-righteous about his choices feeling justified in avoiding any commercial success for his deeper art. Bitter self-destructiveness steeped in self-pity ensue. He gets an out of the blue call from an old college buddy who is now running an experimental drug trial. The upshot is that he needs input from someone he can gauge the creative output of, and since he knows Chaz’s track record (basically zip with glimmers of brilliance) he’s a perfect subject. Chaz agrees and the drug works his creative output into overdrive. There is one side effect; he has long and elaborate hallucinations that he is the great 17th century master Velazquez. At first he only lives through moments in time, seeing as the painter does and doing as well. When he wakes up, he’s also done these things in his real life although in a trance. People freak out because he’s uncontrollable, unresponsive and occasionally violent. This last being shown through a frenetic vignette in which Chaz wakes from a Velazquez interlude to find himself not in his down-and-nearly-out position, but one of a major artist of our time; successful and rich. He freaks.When he’s sprung from the mental ward by his college buddy turned art dealer, Mark, he’s made an offer he can’t refuse. Flat broke with a sick kid and two ex-wives, he needs cash, something Mark can guarantee in spades. During this project he gets involved with the real architect of the deal, a very shady illegal art dealer named Krebs. It seems Krebs made his fortune and reputation by ‘discovering’ lost masterpieces confiscated by the Nazis. By diverting shipments and forging providence during the war, he builds up a nice little supply for future use. Now he wants Chaz to forge a Velazquez. So now through much angst, increased hallucinogenic episodes as Velazquez and paranoid delusions, Chaz complies. Whole months are missing from his present. He believes himself to really believe he was Velazquez. His present actions mirror his “past” almost exactly and the cracks are starting to show. Krebs keeps him a virtual prisoner saying it is for his own good; that his backers often lose interest in a pet artist and, to protect their interests, put down pet artist. Krebs doesn’t want to lose another one. Which brings us to his condition as a whole. A madman is far less dangerous as a forger because of his low credibility. This state satisfies the backers and they leave him be. The drug and the hallucinations were all part of the scheme to keep Chaz alive and producing, but harmless. It was a nice accordion fold of reality to get through and made me feel pretty sympathetic towards the somewhat unlikeable Chaz.In the end, Chaz accepts his status and his life as an artist. The madness ‘ruse’ appears to be working, albeit he is still convinced that his existence and that of Velazquez intersected at one point. He is now that successful and rich artist who can pretty much do what he wants when he wants. He seems content and it’s kind of a relief.
    • 4/5
      A talented but not successful artist is manipulated in forging a painting in the artistic style of the 17th century Spanish artist Velazquez. During this endeavor, he appears to time travel and embody the famous artist or is it insanity?
    • 4/5
      Having just finished this book, I searched around for reviews of this novel and observed that people either really liked this book or they really disliked it. I'm in the middle somewhere. On one hand, books that explore the boundaries between reality and unreality are my favorite genre of novels, and I do agree with the statement that the narrator makes at the end of this novel where he says " truth has left the building." Everything is manipulable now, even photography, and art is a lie to begin with...We all tell lies, even the stories we tell ourselves about our lives, even in the intimate depths of our private thoughts." If ever there was a statement one could consider true, this is it, accompanied by the one that says "if it can be believable, it can be real." For this reason, I loved exploring Forgery of Venus. Right up to the end I was sucked in completely and when a book can do that, well, that's a good sign as far as keeping my reading interest alive. The book also has a bit of a feel of DuMaurier's House on the Strand, which I happened to enjoy, with the scenes going back in time to the painter Velazquez, then forward again with a jolt. I also have enjoyed pretty much whatever Michael Gruber has written, because I do enjoy the way he goes about setting up a very palpable sense of tension in his books. His characters (imho) are not always meant to be likeable and so you can't find fault there (I did not like the main character, Chaz Wilmot, but hey...if I didn't like him, then the author's done his job), but the main players, I thought, were drawn well, down to their respective psychoses. On the flip side, though, I felt like the resolution to Chaz Wilmot's dilemma was way too pat and I was a bit disappointed. Also, imho, some of the scenes where he was lost in the world of Velazquez were at points tedious to read and I started skimming, a fate I generally reserve for romantic interludes in novels where I don't think they are appropriate.I'll be buying this one when it comes out to add to my collection of Gruber's novels. I'd recommend it to people who are interested in art and art history, as well as people who enjoy a good suspense novel. And, if there are other people such as myself who enjoy reading about the elusiveness of truth and reality, this one will hold your interest for a while. Overall, a good read and one I'd recommend, but not to the mainstream reading public. Once again, my thanks to Librarything and HarperCollins for the opportunity to review this book.
    • 4/5
      The first few times I heard about this popular novel, I thought the plot sounded too contrived for me to enjoy it. But after numerous strong reviews from diverse sources I added it to my list. As soon as I started reading it I couldn't put it down. It's the story of a painter in present day New York City whose style and technique belong in an older era. When he joins a clinical trial for a new drug designed to increase creativity, he finds himself traveling back first to his own youth and then to that of a famous painter. Soon he's not sure what is real, past and present, and when a painting by an old master is discovered the reader no longer knows who the real artist is. It was an unexpected page turner!
    • 4/5
      This is the first book I read by Michael Gruber and I enjoyed it, for the most part. The book grabbed me from the first page, and I found the combination of the historical detail and the information about art a fascinating combination. The book was a little slower paced than I would have liked, especially if it is supposed to be a thriller, but it still held my attention throughout and had enough twists and turns in the plots that always kept me guessing.
    • 3/5
      I must confess, I come to this review with a heavy heart. Blurbs on the dust jacket were unanimously positive. Moreover, The Forgery of Venus was recommended to me by a fellow poet whose work I quite respect. Her accolades were ample. I, unfortunately, don’t share them.

      Let me say from the outset that Michael Gruber’s prose is quite respectable — in most instances. However, his editing skills leave a lot to be desired. Whether it’s the result of drugs, alcohol, weariness or indifference, I can’t know — and cannot be the judge. But whatever it may be, he needs a little something the morning after—to set his story back on track.

      To quote from p. 284: “I might be Chaz Wilmot, hack artist, forger of a painting now hailed as one of the great works of Velázquez, hiding out from criminals. I might be Chaz Wilmot, successful New York painter, now insane and under treatment, with a load of false memories, just as false as that conversation with a baroque dwarf. Or I might be Diego Velázquez, caught in a nightmare. Or some combination. Or someone else entirely. Or maybe this was hell itself. How would I tell?”

      This was precisely the problem with The Forgery of Venus. It was simply too difficult to follow Gruber’s narrative time and time again—and to know which of his many characters (and from which time period) was speaking.

      I read this book under almost ideal circumstances — i.e., virtually without distraction and, cover to cover, within 72 hours. And yet, I got lost on several occasions.

      Under the best of circumstances, a reasonably good reader should not have to guess at what the author intended. But very few of us have the privilege of reading under the best of circumstances. To my way of thinking — as a writer myself — Michael Gruber did not serve his readers well with this book.

      RRB
      4/07/13
      Brooklyn, NY
    • 3/5
      A knock off of Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring -- the story is fact and fiction woven around a famous painting. Most of the story is told via a recording on a CD--a first person account of an artist who travels through time and space while under the influence of a drug. In reality--that portion of the book fills more than 7 discs in the audio format. An interesting premise for a story, but I was rather put off by this book. I like a book that enlightens me in some area--I learn a few things about the world while I am reading. I'll admit it, art history isn't my strong suit, but rather than feel like I learned something, I felt like I just spent several hours with someone who was trying way to hard to impress me with what they knew. The plot was overshadowed by superfluous ostentatious crap. No real drama either. Disappointing. It was one of those experiences that left me wondering why -- why I kept plodding through it.
    • 2/5
      Warning: this book is FULL of swearing. Like, to the point that it's seriously distracting.

      The story's interesting, but choppily written. I find I have no problem at this point putting it down.
    • 4/5
      Chaz Wilmot is a painter who is stuck in a rut producing advertising art so he can afford to pay for his son's expensive medical treatments. He agrees to take part in an experimental drug study focusing on artists and their creativity. Soon afterwards Chaz starts slipping into memories of the great painter Diego Velazquez. But these may not just be memories; he seems to actually be leaping back in time and living the painters' life. This is the beginning of a roller coaster ride that carries Chaz from New York to Italy, from sanity to insanity and into the world of international art forgery. Chaz is very confused and doesn't understand what is happening and the reader tries to make sense of it all. Is Chad having drug-induced visions? Is there something supernatural happening to him? Or perhaps Chad is really a psychotic mental patient? This was a thrilling read that continuously kept me guessing. Chaz is a very unreliable narrator and because of that I did find it hard to connect with him and actually care what happened to him. The profanity in the narrative bothered me some. It's one thing to have characters swearing at each other but I find it irritating when the narrator is swearing at me. However, the plot was a whirlwind of intrigue that kept me interested until the unsettling finish. I also loved the art world setting from the New York art galleries to 15th century Italy and Spain. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      This book has been described as “a tale within a tale within a tale” and it most certainly is! A modern day artist has the talent to paint like the old masters, specifically Diego Valasquez. Add to that a mix of genius, a little insanity, a few narcotics, some shady characters, a healthy dose of intrigue and some very interesting and factual art history and you pretty much sum up this book. I loved it.
    • 4/5
      Michael Gruber is one of my favorite authors, and I think I've read all of his novels at this point.. This one is about the world of artists and forgers, but the central question is whether the main character is mad (always an intriguing question). I found the information about the art world somewhat too detailed at times, but as the story progressed and the main character's dilemma came into focus, the difficulty of determining which of his experiences were real became quite a scary proposition to contemplate.
    • 4/5
      This one's got somewhat of a surreal quality to it. The plot moves along a little bit slowly, and some of the references to art restoration and forgery were somewhat lost on me, but I also found that I learned some things, specifically about the Spanish artist Velazquez. The main meat of the novel centers on a current-day artist, Chaz Wilmot, who plods along in life doing art parodies, despite the fact that he is really quite talented, following in the footsteps of his artist father. He is eventually commissioned by a German art dealer to re-create a lost Velazquez piece, passing it off as the real thing. In the meantime, he has memory flashbacks, some from his own childhood, and some as the artist Velazquez himself, in 17th century Spain. This may or may not be a result of a drug study he is participating in. The reader is led to believe this is the case, but that's when the surreal aspect comes in and the reader is struggling to separate what's real and what is imagined. While it makes for an interesting story and the reader is kept guessing, it's also somewhat confusing and disjointed at times. I enjoyed the story for the most part, although it didn't necessarily grip me like I think it had the potential to do.
    • 4/5
      Very unique - an intricate tale told by an unreliable narrator. This is the second Gruber novel I've read and I just love his voice.