Paint It Black: A Novel
by Janet Fitch
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Book Summary Information
Author: Janet FitchEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2006-09-18
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Book Reviews of Paint It Black: A Novel
Book Review: Post-it notes everywhere.
Summary: 5 Stars
I have this funny thing where I post-it lines in books that I love, and honestly (other then The Bride Stripped Bare By Nikki Gemmel) this book has the most. This book is amazing and Fitch brings light and perspective on drugs and loss and love and sex that really portray them in a brighter light for the human mind. I am one to enjoy lots of sex and drugs in my book anyways, but the language of Fitch's writing is impeccable. She makes comparisons that are so clear in someones mind you can't help but know exactly what she is talking about. It's amazing. Also, your mind automatically creates a picure of everything around just by a few simple key words Fitch uses. I love being inside Josie's head and even though she is all whacked out I believe in her as a narrator of memories and love lost. It's amazing, I have now bought White Oleander also by Fitch just because of Paint it Black and I earlier vowed to myself no more Oprah book list books, yet because of Fitch I had to do it.
Summary of Paint It Black: A Novel
From the bestselling author of White Oleander, a powerful story of passion, first love, and a young woman's search for a true world in the aftermath of loss.Josie Tyrell, art model, teen runaway, and denizen of LA's 1980 punk rock scene, finds a chance at real love with art student Michael Faraday. A Harvard dropout and son of a renowned pianist, Michael introduces her to his spiritual quest and a world of sophistication she had never dreamed existed. But when she receives a call from the Los Angeles County Coroner, asking her to identify her lover's dead body, her bright dreams all turn to black.
"What happens to a dream when the dreamer is gone?" is the central question of PAINT IT BLACK, the story of the aftermath of Michael's death, and Josie's struggle to hold onto the true world he shared with her. As Josie searches for the key to understanding his death, she finds herself both repelled and attracted to Michael's pianist mother, Meredith, who holds Josie responsible for her son's torment. Soon, the two women find themselves drawn into a twisted relationship reflecting equal parts distrust and blind need.
Passionate, wounded, fiercely alive, Josie Tyrell walks the brink of her own destruction as she fights to discover the meaning of Michael's death. With the luxurious prose and emotional intensity that are her hallmarks, Janet Fitch has written a spellbinding new novel about love, betrayal, and the possibility of transcendence.
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Following the huge success of White Oleander, where Janet Fitch portrayed the coming-of-age of Astrid, a young girl placed in foster care after her mother murders a former lover and goes to prison for life, she has once again created an indelible portrait of a young woman in Paint it Black. Josie Tyrell is a teenage runaway, an artist's model, and an habitué of the '80s LA punk rock scene. She is a white trash escapee from Bakersfield, having left a going nowhere life there. Now, sex, drugs and rock n' roll inform her days and nights. Paint it Black is the perfect title choice because Josie's lover is never coming back, as the song says.
Josie meets Michael Faraday, son of concert pianist Meredith Loewy and writer Calvin Faraday, long divorced. He is everything that she is not: refined, wealthy, well-traveled, brilliant by fits and starts. He is also a Harvard dropout, leaving school so he can paint; his new obsession. He refuses help from his mother, who is furious about his decision to leave school, but it doesn't bother him to have Josie working three jobs to support them. He is given to black moods, frozen in amber by his perfectionism, contemptuous of those who do not agree with him about art and life. Josie adores him. One day much like any other, he leaves their house, saying that he is going to his mother's so that he can paint in solitude. Instead, he goes to a motel in 29 Palms and shoots himself in the head.
What follows is days of watching Josie in a near fugue state from grief, drugs, booze, and going over and over her love for Michael, trying to grasp how he could do what he did. After all, didn't they share the "true world," Michael's characterization of their cocoon of love and exclusivity?
Meredith calls her and says, "Why are you alive? What is the excuse for Josie Tyrell? I ask you." Ultimately, they form a tenuous relationship, because all that is left of Michael lives in the two women. Josie even lives with Meredith for a while. When Meredith is ready to go on tour again, she asks Josie to go to Europe with her. Before she can do that, she must go to 29 Palms and try to understand, finally, why Michael's depression pushed him over the edge. That puzzle is not solved, nor can it be, but the end of the story is a hopeful, upbeat, new beginning. Janet Fitch has beaten the curse of the sophomore slump with this dynamite second novel. --Valerie Ryan
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