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Luncheon of the Boating Party

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Luncheon of the Boating Party

By: Susan Vreeland
Narrated by: Karen White
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About this listen

 Instantly recognizable, Auguste Renoir's masterpiece depicts a gathering of his real friends enjoying a summer Sunday on a café terrace along the Seine near Paris. A wealthy painter, an art collector, an Italian journalist, a war hero, a celebrated actress, and Renoir's future wife, among others, share this moment of la vie moderne, a time when social constraints were loosening and Paris was healing after the Franco-Prussian War. Parisians were bursting with a desire for pleasure and a yearning to create something extraordinary out of life. Renoir shared these urges and took on this most challenging project at a time of personal crises in art and love, all the while facing issues of loyalty and the diverging styles that were tearing apart the Impressionist group.

Narrated by Renoir and seven of the models, and using settings in Paris and on the Seine, Vreeland illuminates the gusto, hedonism, and art of the era. With a gorgeous palette of vibrant, captivating characters, she paints their lives, loves, losses, and triumphs in a brilliant portrait of her own.

©2007 Susan Vreeland (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., and Books on Tape. All rights reserved. Biographical Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Fiction France War

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Critic reviews

"A carefully constructed historical novel." (Booklist)
"Vivid....Vreeland achieves a detailed and surprising group portrait, individualized and immediate." (Publishers Weekly)
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The author classifies this book as an historical novel, based on the incidents surrounding the painting by Renoir of the Luncheon at the Boating Party. It is none the worse for that. Her research has obviously been thorough, but this book rises above the bare facts to represent a completely 'readable' story of how theses real characters interacted with one another to contribute to this wonderful painting. Until I 'read' this book, I considered Renoir to be one of the least of the Impressionists, painting the pretty pictures one sees on chocolate boxes etc. Now, I understand his pivotal role in the movement and how he influenced later painters. I can't wait to get to Washington DC to see the picture in the flesh.
The narration is very much in tune with the spirit of the book, and most of the French pronunciation excellent, is though it is let down by some strange anomalies, such as the pronunciation of Montmartre (naturally a frequently mentioned place) as MonTmartre.

A lovely book

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A good story and decent history of the impressionists. However, the narrator murders the French words and names in the story ...her accent is deplorable or, rather, nonexistent. I found this terribly grating!

Good story but poor narration

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