Lynda C. (Readnmachine) reviewed The Tattoo Artist : A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) on + 1444 more book reviews
After an interminably slow set-up, this amazing novel moves into high gear for its second half and never thereafter loosens its grip on the reader.
Because Ciment uses a first-person flashback narrative, the reader knows going in that the protagonist, Sara Ehrenreich, is a woman returning to 1970s New York after a 30-year involuntary sojourn on a remote Pacific island, and that her body is now covered in elaborate tattoos. Just how this all came about and what it says about Sara in particular, art in general, and the care and feeding of the human soul overall, makes up the rest of the book.
When we first meet Sara Rabinowitz, she is one of the numberless, faceless seamstresses in New York's garment district, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants and a budding Socialist who falls into a sexual relationship with Philip Ehrenreich, whose talents in the bedroom far exceed his artistic ambitions. The slow building of this relationship and the circumstances that drive them to an ill-starred journey to collect Polynesian ceremonial masks on behalf of a collector form the first half of the book. Teasing flash-forwards from Sara may be the only thing that can drag the reader through this tedious set-up, but the slog is rewarded when the pair finally reaches the island of Ta'un'uu.
Their expectations are shattered when, instead of finding naïve and simple natives eager to trade primitive art for New World trinkets, they find themselves immersed in a culture as alien, detailed, and potentially dangerous as any science-fiction construct ever developed. Their rookie mistakes and unwillingness to adapt to the circumstances they find lead to a tragic accident with horrific ramifications. Sara's initially reluctant entry into the society within which she and Philip are now irrevocably marooned undergoes a change as deep and permanent as the tattoos which lead her to literally embody the island notion of breath as soul, music as life, and art as an indelible component of both.
Utterly unique in concept, this is a journey through time, space, and being itself.
Because Ciment uses a first-person flashback narrative, the reader knows going in that the protagonist, Sara Ehrenreich, is a woman returning to 1970s New York after a 30-year involuntary sojourn on a remote Pacific island, and that her body is now covered in elaborate tattoos. Just how this all came about and what it says about Sara in particular, art in general, and the care and feeding of the human soul overall, makes up the rest of the book.
When we first meet Sara Rabinowitz, she is one of the numberless, faceless seamstresses in New York's garment district, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants and a budding Socialist who falls into a sexual relationship with Philip Ehrenreich, whose talents in the bedroom far exceed his artistic ambitions. The slow building of this relationship and the circumstances that drive them to an ill-starred journey to collect Polynesian ceremonial masks on behalf of a collector form the first half of the book. Teasing flash-forwards from Sara may be the only thing that can drag the reader through this tedious set-up, but the slog is rewarded when the pair finally reaches the island of Ta'un'uu.
Their expectations are shattered when, instead of finding naïve and simple natives eager to trade primitive art for New World trinkets, they find themselves immersed in a culture as alien, detailed, and potentially dangerous as any science-fiction construct ever developed. Their rookie mistakes and unwillingness to adapt to the circumstances they find lead to a tragic accident with horrific ramifications. Sara's initially reluctant entry into the society within which she and Philip are now irrevocably marooned undergoes a change as deep and permanent as the tattoos which lead her to literally embody the island notion of breath as soul, music as life, and art as an indelible component of both.
Utterly unique in concept, this is a journey through time, space, and being itself.
