My thanks to netgalley and Little, Brown for an advance copy of this novel. In case you can’t tell, I’m not a big an of McLain.
For those who enjoy Paula McLain, this book will probably be enjoyable as the writing styles are definitely similar.
The author needed to do a better job of explaining her. In the end, I had trouble relating to Lee. So parts of this book definitely irritated me and I skimmed over those sections. I am not a fan of romance novels and I tend to get irritated at books that purport to be historical fiction when they’re really more romance novels. I liked that the book alternates between Lee in Paris with Man Ray and her time as a war correspondent in London and France during WWII. What I didn’t enjoy it was when it lingered for pages on the romance and sex. When she is determining how to take a shot, I could totally envision it. The book shines when the descriptions turn to the art of photography, especially when Lee is framing a shot or Man is teaching her how to develop for maximum effect or they come up with a new technique. It took me back to the days when photography was as much about developing a picture as taking it.
Told in interweaving timelines, this sensuous, richly detailed novel brings Lee Miller-a brilliant and pioneering artist-out of the shadows of a man's legacy and into the light.Īs an amateur photographer and someone who loves photography as art, I was thrilled to get an advance copy of this book about Lee Miller and Man Ray. Through it all, Lee must grapple with the question of whether it's possible to reconcile romantic desire with artistic ambition-and what she will have to sacrifice to do so. Lee's journey takes us from the cabarets of bohemian Paris to the battlefields of war-torn Europe during WWII, from discovering radical new photography techniques to documenting the liberation of the concentration camps as one of the first female war correspondents. But Man Ray turns out to be an egotistical, charismatic force, and as they work together in the darkroom, their personal and professional lives become intimately entwined, changing the course of Lee's life forever. Though he wants to use her only as a model, Lee convinces him to take her on as his assistant and teach her everything he knows. "I'd rather take a photograph than be one," she declares after she arrives in Paris in 1929, where she soon catches the eye of the famous Surrealist Man Ray. She went to Paris to start over, to make art instead of being made into it.Ī captivating debut novel by Whitney Scharer, The Age of Light tells the story of Vogue model turned renowned photographer Lee Miller, and her search to forge a new identity as an artist after a life spent as a muse.
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