When Whitney Scharer describes her goal in writing The Age of Light, I’m all in.
She wants “to present Lee as the complicated woman she was: beautiful and talented, of course, but also flawed and fragile, and it was more important to me to get this right than to stay entirely inside the lines of written history”.
I am inspired by the imperfect. I would rather a believable character than an infallible one: living-breathing, not paper-thin. Imagined dialogue, scenes rich with sensory detail: whatever it takes to make a life come off a page. I would rather be made to feel a little uncomfortable in the process of inhabiting someone else’s perspective than to feel as though I’m shut out of it.
Scharer does capture Lee Miller’s vulnerability and imperfections, but intimacy is something on display, something beyond my reach as a reader. Not for lack of trying on the author’s part.
“It is so intimate – she didn’t realize how intimate it would be,” she writes, about Lee’s work as the photographer Man Ray’s assistant. “She could so easily turn around and face him, and part of her is curious about what would happen if she did, what it would feel like to really touch him. But the dark is playing tricks on her. What she wants is her pictures, to get them right.”
The intimacy doesn’t stop here. Lee Miller’s sexuality is a driving force in the narrative and these scenes are protracted and detailed. (In contrast, the passages devoted to Miller’s remarkable wartime photography are short and presented out-of-time. Perhaps this is deliberate, because the photographer is separated from the work, literally, by the lens and the device. Perhaps it has to do with the idea that the war gives her gifts, as described in a quote below.)
“The feeling of his body is pure animal comfort. Lee feels herself relax a bit, feels her heartbeat slow.”
How different might this scene be experienced if it were “Lee relaxes. Her heartbeat slows.” The distance is built into the narrative’s point-of-view, so that readers are always reminded that Lee is feeling something before that feeling is laid out for us. (So, the best I can hope for is to understand what she is feeling, not feel it.)
The physicality of her character makes sense, given that she began her career as a model (and, then, as a muse), but for my reading taste I would have preferred either to be situated closer to Lee’s perspective (from a technical perspective) or to have had more distance built in, so that the atmosphere and artistry could flourish. The Dada and Surrealist movements are startling and rich. The trailer, for instance, is evocative.
Trailer for The Age of Light (49 seconds)
Readers who object to authors taking creative license with scenes populated by historical figures will not be comfortable with this kind of story-telling. And this is not the Hilary Mantel style of recreation, where the bulk of the detail described is historical reimagining, with an occasional foray into emotional territory. It ventures into more intimate detail than Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife too. (And, yet, I felt much closer to those authors’ versions of Thomas Cromwell and Laura Bush.)
“…but then a week later she is walking through Hampstead Heath and sees another downed balloon, pinned to the ground but still half filled with air, like a giant egg, two geese standing proudly before it. The photo she takes of it is a marvel, the war’s first gift to her, and Lee feels buoyed aloft herself, filled with the promise of all that the coming days might offer her.”
With intimacy and marvels, I want to inhabit them rather than observe them, and Whitney Scharer is a debut novelist. Her prose is loose, although readers who are wholly absorbed by the story will likely overlook her propensity for serial phrases and clauses (which sometimes leads to agreement issues).
There are some delightful details included, however, like the Italian edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover on Man’s shelf, which she has heard whispered about but is shocked to see that he owns and a five-button placket front on a set of trousers.
These are subtly tucked into the prose, rather than layered on top, as evidence of hours of research (and a list of resources in the accompanying author’s note).
Whitney Scharer does achieve her goal, I believe. She presents Lee Miller’s beauty and talent, flaws and fragility.
When I pick up a history book, I expect to be presented with prominent figures; when I pick up an historical novel, I yearn to crawl inside the skins of those people.
Candid Camera with Lee Miller 1946 (2 minutes, 23 seconds)
Well, before now I didn’t even know who Lee Miller was… so thank you!
I would have wanted a more emotional connection, as well.
Which is worth noting, as it’s always good to see the profiles of hardworking artists recognized.
I loved the Candid Camera video. There is one of Mavis Gallant from that era too which also makes me smile.
I’m often a little wary of fictionalised insights into a real person’s life, however fascinating that individual might be. This book has been quite heavily promoted in the UK with lots of materials for bookshops etc. What a shame it didn’t quite live up to the promise. As other have said, I think you’ve been very fair to the book, touching on its strengths alongside the weaknesses. That’s not always an easy thing to do with such sensitivity.
Thanks, Jacqui. My own preferences don’t necessarily align with the author’s. She may well have been aiming for a more distanced portrayal (or, as Rebecca mentioned, been aiming for a tone which would set this apart from the marketing blur of “women’s fiction”). That which seems possible based on her Author’s Notes. But then, I wonder, why fiction and not biography. Perhaps it’s more about the time, more about what she might represent as a symbol, than about inhabiting an individual persona? shrugs Tricky territory.
I’m not a huge fan of historical novels, but this one does appeal to me. This one is at all the bookstores, and though I noted it, I wasn’t sure it would be for me.
Now i’m sure it is!
I hope you do find a stronger connection with it than I did. (I’m hit-and-miss with historical novels. Some, I love. Others, not so much.)
Huh, I haven’t heard of this book until now, but it seems popular (i.e. there are lots of blurbs!). I like historical fiction based on real characters too, because i feel like i’m learning something, and then it usually prompts me to do a bit of wikipedia-ing after I’m done the book to verify what’s real and what isn’t…
It’s getting a lot of media attention (e.g. on The Guardian Books podcast, in the pages of TNYTBR): as you say, there are some impressive blurbs, so I think people are taking note of that.
I felt that this was a book with more promise than fulfilment, but as you say, it’s a debut novel and debuts are rarely flawless.
Maybe we’re just not her audience either? Did I miss your review, Lisa?
You’ve been very fair to the book and its (subjective) shortcomings. I felt it was overtly cinematic: you see the scenes playing out in front of you; the camera cuts to the wartime flash-forwards. Which makes sense for a novel that’s about photography, but maybe means that for you Scharer focused on atmosphere and description over emotion. Do you think that would have been rectified by making it a first-person narrative? (I’m thinking of other similar novels that were in the first person, if I recall correctly: The Paris Wife, Z.) I would have liked to read more about Miller’s work and wartime experiences, too.
I am trying to understand the writer’s intentions and I was looking for the evidence of book’s structure as a reflection of the art of photography, but if that was part of her intention, it didn’t reach me. Parts of it do feel cinematic, but not photographic; so I wonder if that’s not more a reflection of the author/agent’s vision of film options rather than an exploration of Lee Miller’s artistry. Telling it in first-person would have felt like a grammatical alteration for me. I’m not convinced that crawling inside her skin was her goal. Do you think it would have changed your reading of it? Did I miss your review?
I think third-person narration was probably a literary decision to distance the book from women’s/romance fiction — but judging by some of the most popular reviews on Goodreads, that didn’t work for some readers, who have mostly objected to the erotic content.
I posted an extract from my Goodreads review as part of a recent roundup: https://bookishbeck.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/four-recent-review-books-ernaux-nunez-rubin-scharer/. A difficult book for me to assess as a whole because there were elements that I liked very much but others that I didn’t. So my 4-star rating is generous, and should probably be more like 3.5. I knew nothing of Miller before picking this up, not even her name, so perhaps my unfamiliarity also worked against my enjoyment.
Her name was familiar to me only in a vague sense, via her affiliation with the other artists, so I didn’t come to the book with any preconceived ideas or expectation either. But, then, I also didn’t know much more about Laura Bush or Thomas Cromwell. Basically their job titles. laughs But had you been familiar, you could have been bothered by choices she made to include/exclude various elements, no?
Generally speaking, I think the kind of intimate scenes she incorporates can be important; fewer readers question their inclusion in books about male artists – their sexuality is assumed to be an important part of their lives. But, for me, the intimacy in these scenes wasn’t matched for me in a sense of intimacy with her character. LIke that Maile Meloy story collection: both of those are things I want (not just one).
Thanks for including your link. I encourage others to check it out too! Which is what I’m off to do…
Excellent review. I think you should turn you hand to editing.
And editing doesn’t really get in the way of one’s reading either! (Only, sometimes, in the way of enjoying it.)