When I first started reading The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, by Dominic Smith, I was pretty sure I didn’t like it. The first chapter felt like it was about dissatisfied rich people and I was not in the mood for that nonsense. Happily, it is not about dissatisfied rich people, nor is it about the theft and forgery of a Dutch painting, which is what I thought it was about after I decided it wasn’t about rich people. Really though, it’s about three […]
Not quite the art heist book I thought it’d be, but something quieter and wonderful
This year I’m discovering that crime in the art world is basically catnip to me. I already raved about Unbecoming earlier this year and I’m about to rave about The Last Painting of Sara de Vos. Both books deftly hop from different narrative viewpoints in time, but The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is much more contemplative and less sinister in tone. This book is less about crime than it is about humans making mistakes and then doing the best they can to live […]