A passionate and engaging novel retracing the last three years of a crazy and tormented love story between Jeanne Hebutèrne and Amedeo Modigliani in Paris at the turn of the 20th century.
The author tells the love story through the eyes of Jeanne, a young aspiring artist who meets Amedeo, a brilliant but wild Italian painter, and falls madly in love with him. The story begins in 1920, on the night when the young girl, desperate and pregnant with her second child, decides to end her life. The story of their last three years, from 1917 to early 1920, then unfolds in Jeanne’s memories. A vivid picture is painted for readers, filled with impeccable details of the life lived by Parisian artists in the 1910s, and of Amedeo Modigliani and the way he painted, lived and related to the art world, and to women. All narrated in the first person and so particularly gripping with a fast-moving narrative and emotional involvement that also devotes ample space to the sentiments of the characters and the human soul. Fiction and historic fact are closely entwined in this novel to forge harmonious style, narrative pace and consistency. The author is a lover and scholar of art history and her love of art shines through as she delivers a captivating and instructive read.