Review by Booklist Review
Louisa wasn't sure the leafy Connecticut suburbs would ever be receptive to her idea of "real art," but she's trying to broaden her community's artistic horizons, in her own way. A former model and photographer who swapped the gritty rawness of New York for the country clubs of her sleepy, affluent hometown, Louisa now curates Nearwater's local art center. Married to a wealthy architect and raising a preteen daughter, she still feels a deep connection to the urgency and vibrancy of art-world Manhattan. When Louisa meets a local artist and activist with the same confidence and passion she once recognized in herself, everything she's worked to build is in danger of going up in flames. In this tightly paced novel that echoes Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere (2017),Tom Perrotta's Mrs. Fletcher (2017), and A. Natasha Joukovsky's The Portrait of a Mirror (2021), Acampora (The Paper Wasp, 2019) sets the idealism of youth against middle-age complacency and high-society reservations. Acampora reveals Louisa's complicated relationship with her daughter slowly and methodically, letting readers gradually understand the extent of Louisa's preoccupations. With this gem of a novel, Acampora cements herself as a thrilling voice in fiction.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In the arresting latest from Acampora (The Paper Wasp), a former artist is jolted from her suburban torpor. Louisa has left Manhattan and her photography career behind to settle in the wealthy town of Nearwater, Conn., with her older architect husband, Richard, and their 12-year-old daughter, Sylvie. Shaken by the death of a former lover from her Manhattan art world days, Louisa begins to mistrust the "fairytale quicksand" of her Connecticut life ("Grown people need friction to live," as the author puts it). Enter the Steigers, an Austrian couple who are big players on the international art scene, and whose artist son, Gabriel, makes brash environmentalist installations (he calls one of them a "new ark for our time"). Gabriel soon talks Louisa into an under-the-table residency at the town art center, which she's trying to whip into shape, and enlists Sylvie's help in a secret and dangerous project. The entanglements result in a series of literal and figurative conflagrations. Louisa makes for an alluring heroine who is more complex than the average bored, tempted suburbanite. The supporting characters, however, are less well drawn, whether it be the priggish Richard or the committed but comically pompous Gabriel. Still, Acampora achieves a sharp and tense depiction of an illusory and stultifying haven. Overall, it's enjoyably offbeat. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Acampora follows up her award-winning The Paper Wasp and Wonder Garden with the story of wealthy and beautiful Louisa Rader, who runs a local arts center in Connecticut, and an environmentally aware young artist she befriends named Gabriel Steiger. Expelled from high school for painting a controversial mural reinterpreting The Last Supper with endangered animals and a U.S. president handing out hamburgers, Gabriel re-creates his version of a museum originally constructed by a 20th-century Viennese artist with the adopted name Friedensreich Hundertwasser ("hundred waters") that featured a grass roof, trees coming through the windows, and a wavy floor to simulate the artist's ventures around the world. The museum is housed in an outbuilding of Louisa's Nearwater Arts Center, where--unbeknownst to Louisa--Gabriel included a steamy audio that has her scrambling to explain to her husband that it's all for the sake of art. VERDICT With a fluid writing style and a plot that moves along quickly, Acampora's absorbing new work is an excellent choice for book discussion groups. Highly recommended.--Lisa Rohrbaugh
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