From Publishers Weekly
Elegantly conceived and tenderly written, this cameo of a novel ushers readers into a small, warmly lit corner of art history. Inspired by five Mary Cassatt paintings of Cassatt's older sister, Lydia, Chessman (Ohio Angels) paints her own intimate portrait of the admirable Lydia, chronicling Lydia's thoughts and feelings as she models for Mary in Paris in the late 1870s and early 1880s. All the while, Lydia is conscious that she is dying of Bright's disease, and her thoughtful contemplation of her life and dashed hopes give shape to the tale. Lydia, who is in her 40s, never married the man she loved was killed in the Civil War but she reveals a sharp, sophisticated awareness of desire in her observations of her sister Mary (May), and May's lover, the painter Edgar Degas. Chessman sees May as vividly as she does Lydia, describing her as a live wire, a woman with outsize ambitions for her times, but also as a devoted sister. Chessman's prose can be obvious and overcareful "I think May's sadness, when she heard my diagnosis, was increased by her memory of earlier sorrows" but her instinctive understanding of the sisters' relationship and her thoughtful description of their studio collaborations elevate this understated effort. The five paintings, beautifully reproduced, appear at intervals and acquire new depth even as they enrich Chessman's story. 4-city author tour. (Nov. 1)Forecast: Published in an unusual joint venture by Seven Stories and the Permanent Press, this title the #1 BookSense pick for November/December is attracting much early attention. The small trim size and glossy art inserts make it an appealing gift book, and it's a safe bet that holiday sales will be strong. U.S. paperback rights to Plume; foreign rights sold in the U.K., Greece, Italy and Australia/New Zealand.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
As you read Chessman's second novel (after Ohio Angels), be prepared for an insightful and moving tale about a great American painter and her family. Here is the poignant story of Lydia, Mary Cassatt's sister, who details the important role she played in the creation of Cassatt's early Impressionist paintings. Each chapter centers on a painting by Mary that involves Lydia, and the narrative offers wonderful insight into Cassatt's bold life and her relationships with artists such as Renoir, Caillebotte, and especially Degas. Though Lydia is fighting a horrible battle against Bright's disease, she continues to pose for her sister and to live her life with courage and dignity. As Degas observes to Lydia, "You show me how to live, if only I could do it as you do." A special treat is the inclusion of color plates of famed Cassatt works like "Lydia Crocheting in the Garden." Like Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring (LJ 10/15/99), this book beautifully limns the impact of art on a woman close to a great artist though the women involved are very different. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries. Vicki Cecil, Hartford City P.L., IN Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Lydia Cassatt died in her 40s in Paris, having posed for five of her sister Mary's (May's) paintings. Weakened in body but active of mind, she spends her last months musing on the artistic life around her, May's implied romance with Degas, her relationship with her sister, and the artwork which "caught my soul in paint." Chessman's soft, clear voice wears well as Lydia, and her French is excellent. You can tell she wants you to get inside her subject as she has. Lydia comes across as earnest, observant, and sometimes dreamy, painting May in words as May captures her in colors. You might want to have a book of Cassatt's art work handy to complete this enjoyable listening experience. J.B.G. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Chessman's second novel is a fictitious but plausible account of the relationship between famed American-born impressionist painter Mary Cassatt and her terminally ill sister, Lydia. Mary's sorrow for her sister's chronic struggle with Bright's disease compelled her to render Lydia immortal through the implements of color and canvas. The inspirational moments behind the five paintings featured in this book are relayed in Lydia's courageous voice, and the artwork itself captures the pallid decline of Mary Cassatt's dearest muse. Aside from her expressive paintings and a stoic devotion to family, little to nothing is known about Mary's personal life--though Chessman does hint at a relationship between Mary and the radical painter Edgar Degas. Lydia's view of her receding world is at times laden with bitterness, but mostly there is an unearthly, ladylike composure to Chessman's characterization of her. Despite Lydia's looming death, this translates into a light, enjoyable read, and Chessman does an outstanding job of articulating the wordless exchange between a model and a painter. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


ReadingGroupGuides.com
...a moving...portrait of the free-spirited artist and the sister and model who lived...with such courage, dignity, and grace.


Book Description
Readers will be transported to the vibrant art scene of late nineteenth-century Paris in this richly textured portrait of the relationship between Mary Cassatt and her sister Lydia.

Beginning in the autumn of 1878, Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper dreams its way into the intimate world of Cassatt's older sibling. Told in the reflective, lyrical voice of Lydia, who is dying of Bright's disease, the novel opens a window onto the extraordinary age in which these sisters lived, painting its sweeping narrative canvas with fascinating real-life figures that include Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas, Cassatt's brilliant, subversive mentor.

Featuring five full-color plates of Cassatt's paintings, this is a moving and illuminating exploration of the illusive nature of art and desire, memory and mortality, romantic and familial love.


From the Author
What drew you to the story of Lydia? How deeply did you have to delve into Mary Cassatt's world to recreate her life and the lives of her family? I loved the paintings for which Lydia posed. Something in the quiet vigor of these images-a woman reading, holding a cup, crocheting, driving, embroidering-appealed to me. The colors and shapes of the paintings, so beautiful in themselves, suggested an ordinary yet precious life, a calm and absorbing presence. Once I began to think about Lydia in relation to her sister, these pictures became even more haunting and powerful. To know that Lydia posed while she was ill, and that she died about a year and a half after Mary created the last picture of her, made me wonder how she and Mary felt about each other, and how each of them approached Lydia's impending death. I immersed myself in the world of the Cassatt family as much as possible. Nancy Mowll Mathews' superb biography of Mary Cassatt helped immensely, as did the engaging letters of the Cassatts, which Nancy Mathews selected for publication (titled Cassatt and Her Circle: Selected Letters). I read as much as I could about figures like the Alcotts, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas, and I tried to understand these figures within the context of Impressionism and nineteenth-century American and French history. I also hired a wonderful research assistant, Jennifer Boittin, to help me with the texture of daily French life around 1880; she described the meals that the Cassatts might have eaten, the streets of their quartier, the bits of French that might have come into their conversation. Many other friends came to my aid, with information ranging from embroidery to articles of clothing. My hope in writing this story, though, was to wear whatever knowledge I had gained as lightly as possible, so that the details could come in naturally and simply, just as they would in ordinary life. What made you decide to tell the story from Lydia Cassatt's point of view? How much historical information was available about Lydia? What aspects of her character sprang from your imagination? Although at first I thought of other points of view-Mary's, another model's, Mrs. Cassatt's, a French child's-Lydia kept coming into my mind. Even when I thought of holding the story to a day late in Mary Cassatt's life, or to a week in 1910 when she was on the Nile with her brother Gardiner and his family, Lydia kept appearing in another character's memory. As I searched for a story about Mary Cassatt, I finally decided to look at Lydia head-on, to question her, in a way. Once I began to engage in a kind of dialogue with this figure, I discovered that I was drawn to her very elusiveness. One of the appealing aspects of Lydia as a character was precisely how little people knew about her. She enters books and essays about Mary Cassatt as a largely marginal figure; and yet I felt, as I looked at the pictures of her, that she could not have been marginal to her sister. So-I learnt a certain amount about Lydia, through the references to her in her family's letters, and through the intriguing facts I gleaned from Mathews' biography. I could guess about some aspects of her life as an unmarried, wealthy woman, ill with a kidney disease, who had lived all of her life with her mother and father, in Pennsylvania and Europe, as the oldest child of a large family. And, of course, most of what came into the book was of my own imagining. I created the letter Lydia, as a character, writes to Mary; the sketchbook she wishes she could find; her fiancé, Thomas Houghton; her dreams; her memories. I brought in facts-her baby brother George's death, for instance, or Degas' frequent visits to Mary's household and studio-and wove my imagination around them. Does writing about a real person limit you in terms of already knowing the ending before you begin? I actually hoped, at first, that writing about Lydia Cassatt would help limit me in a wonderful way, by tossing into my lap a story already formed. Yet this did not happen! All I knew about the "ending" of Lydia's life was that she died, and that she was in much pain from her illness as well as from the treatment, which included arsenic and drinking the blood of animals. In my first drafts, I planned to work toward her death as my own fictional ending, yet after much writing and rewriting, I discovered, to my surprise, that this wasn't the ending to my story at all, because the point about my character Lydia wasn't how she died, but how she lived. If you think about it, you realize that each person in the world could inspire thousands of stories. Each story could be true, yet each would rise out of a special slant, a certain interpretation. What I discovered, in writing about this figure of Lydia Cassatt, was my own story, the one I felt ready to write. Which authors do you enjoy reading? I love reading fiction especially, although I often read poetry and autobiography, essays, creative nonfiction, and I enjoy plays too. The fiction writers I most cherish-the giants on my horizon-are Jane Austen, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf. I admire many, many contemporary fiction writers, too many to name here; the authors who come to mind first include Michael Ondaatje, Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, Chang-rae Lee, J.D. Salinger, and William Trevor. Among autobiographers, I profoundly admire Frank McCourt and Elie Wiesel. I have learned an immense amount about language, passion, and the world from Eudora Welty and Annie Dillard. So many more authors who have woven their words into my life: Jonathan Strong, David Huddle, Alice Munro, Susan Minot, Anne Michaels. Lydia's disease and the hovering spectre of death permeate the story. Yet one comes away from the novel with a powerful and exhilarating sense of life and of complete lives lived. How do you want readers to view Lydia and come away feeling about her? I do hope readers come away with a powerful sense of life. I hope my character Lydia can show something about how an ordinary person can live life in an extraordinarily open and sensitive way, right up to the moment of death. If you had to describe your novel in one sentence, what would you say? This is a story about the possibility of love and the power of art's creation, in the face of illness and loss. What are you working on now? I'm writing a novel in the form of intricately linked stories about a contemporary family, focusing especially on a grandmother, her daughter, and her granddaughters. As in my novel about Lydia Cassatt, this fiction raises questions about memory and love, yet in a highly different way. I am focusing on the ways in which my characters remain largely ignorant of each other's personal histories, in spite of their love for each other.


About the Author
Harriet Scott Chessman has taught modern literature and writing at Yale University, and is a member of the faculty of Bread Loaf School of English. She has published a novel, Ohio Angels, essays on art and literature, two children's stories, and an interpretation of Gertrude Stein's writings entitled The Public is Invited to Dance. Her novel-in-progress is about a contemporary family in which three generations of women, bridging Europe and America, become aware of the vital gaps in their knowledge of each other's secret life and history. She has recently moved with her family to the Bay Area.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Set in the lively Parisian art world of the 1880s, this novel imagines a poignant time in the lives of the American impressionist Mary Cassatt and her sister, Lydia. Lydia narrates the story as she poses for five of her sister's paintings. Ill with Bright's disease and conscious of impending death, Lydia contemplates her narrowing world. The novel's subtle power comes from its sustained inquiry into the very evanescence of life that the paintings record.

FROM THE CRITICS

ReadingGroupGuides.com

...a moving...portrait of the free-spirited artist and the sister and model who lived...with such courage, dignity, and grace.

Publishers Weekly

Elegantly conceived and tenderly written, this cameo of a novel ushers readers into a small, warmly lit corner of art history. Inspired by five Mary Cassatt paintings of Cassatt's older sister, Lydia, Chessman (Ohio Angels) paints her own intimate portrait of the admirable Lydia, chronicling Lydia's thoughts and feelings as she models for Mary in Paris in the late 1870s and early 1880s. All the while, Lydia is conscious that she is dying of Bright's disease, and her thoughtful contemplation of her life and dashed hopes give shape to the tale. Lydia, who is in her 40s, never married the man she loved was killed in the Civil War but she reveals a sharp, sophisticated awareness of desire in her observations of her sister Mary (May), and May's lover, the painter Edgar Degas. Chessman sees May as vividly as she does Lydia, describing her as a live wire, a woman with outsize ambitions for her times, but also as a devoted sister. Chessman's prose can be obvious and overcareful "I think May's sadness, when she heard my diagnosis, was increased by her memory of earlier sorrows" but her instinctive understanding of the sisters' relationship and her thoughtful description of their studio collaborations elevate this understated effort. The five paintings, beautifully reproduced, appear at intervals and acquire new depth even as they enrich Chessman's story.

KLIATT

This is a love story, in effect, between noted painter Mary Cassatt and her sister, Lydia. Against the background of 19th-century Paris, Chessman captures the careful balance of affection and tension between the two, Lydia, delicate now in 1878, fatally ill with Bright's disease, and May, robust, dancing her own dance with the more famous Edgar Degas, refusing outwardly to recognize the seriousness of Lydia's condition as she works to capture Lydia on her canvasses. The story is laid on the framework of four of the younger sister's paintings of Lydia: "Woman Reading" (1878), "The Cup of Tea" (1880), "Lydia Crocheting in the Garden" (1880), and "Woman and Child Driving" (1881). Despite herself, Cassatt captures the decline of her sister's health through her choice of postures, facial expressions and skin tones for her beloved model. The background of the novel is richly painted with flashbacks to their childhood, Lydia's suitors and what might have been, as well as the tantalizing relationship between May and Degas. Lydia's yearning, in the face of death, for a husband and children is palpable, and her determination to spend her waning energies posing to help her sister, isolated among loved ones who will not recognize or discuss her imminent death, rises to the heroic. She looks at the woman in the paintings, wanting to be that person May has painted. "Remember me," she thinks, "Don't allow me to be forgotten." And through her own courage and the genius of her sister's brush strokes she will not. Chessman, author of Girl With a Pearl Earring, handles strong emotions with a delicate yet revealing hand, her prose painting a picture as revealing as the paintings, skillfully insinuatingherself into the minds of characters, the spirit of the times and the breathing entity of Paris. A novel that vibrates with life. KLIATT Codes: SA￯﾿ﾽRecommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2001, Plume, 164p., Boatner

Library Journal

Lydia Cassatt was the elder sister of American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt; she was also one of Mary's favorite models. In this novel, told by Lydia, the Cassatts have taken an apartment in Paris so Mary can work with other artists there-Monet, Pizarro, Renoir, Degas-and develop her painting in concert with her peers. Lydia suffers from Bright's Disease and is frequently bed-ridden. When she is well enough, she poses for Mary. While modeling, Lydia has long hours to remember her life, contemplate her approaching death, and consider the larger questions of love, happiness, and how one leaves a mark on the world. Each successive painting for which she sits brings Lydia closer to the realization that she will be remembered, that she has indeed left her mark, and that people will know and appreciate her for many long years, through her sister's paintings. Chessman tells the story with feeling and sympathy, giving the listener the benefit of her intended emphasis and tone. Recommended.-Joanna M. Burkhardt, Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Univ. of Rhode Island, Providence Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

AudioFile