Luncheon of the Boating Party

Luncheon of the Boating Party

By Susan Vreeland (448 pages)

Published by Penguin

Bookish rating: 3

Vreeland’s historical, artsy novel explores the creation of Renoir’s huge, popular painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party. She takes us to Bohemian Paris, and surmises on the crowd of models shown in the painting and Renoir’s angst in painting it, and she conveys some of the contemporary debate and criticism of Impressionism at the time.

Vreeland successfully showcases lots of historical and French cultural detail, not to mention the sense of what Paris was like 100+ years ago, and she depicts the turbulence of an art movement still in flux, not yet fully understood or appreciated. However, the novel lacks enough plot to move it forward, so we readers are subjected to pages and pages and PAGES of banter among the 13 models and teeny tiny, inconsequential scenes. This results in a choppy read. One could argue that Vreeland’s choppiness is intended to mimic the short brush stokes that give a viewer of Renoir’s work an “impression” of the subject, but I highly doubt that’s what she was aiming for. If it was, well, then I’m not a fan.

I never got terribly absorbed in the story, because there was so little story to hang onto. Parisians exchanging witticisms is interesting for a paragraph at most, but not full chapters—though Vreeland obviously does this to fill up scenes in which Renoir is painting. I mean, what can they do besides verbally interact? Each sitting of the models is mostly the same, and again, though Vreeland has carefully written these redundant scenes with clever dialogue (way too much dialogue, in my opinion) and little nuances and details that show she knows her stuff, it’s simply tiresome to read.

This is not a bad book, and it should appeal in many ways to those who love Impressionism and Renoir. However, the novel failed to grab me. I had no plot to follow, except for Renoir fussing about his painting, and the characters were (a) too numerous, (b) not super likable, and (c) not terribly interesting. Yes, parts were of the novel were done well, and Vreeland is a good writer. But overall, I just didn’t enjoy the novel that much.