Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* After writing about her fascinating great-aunt in The Baroness: The Search for Nica, the Rebellious Rothschild (2013), Rothschild delivers her first novel, a capacious and fluently knowledgeable tale that excoriates with mischievously satirical intent the viciously competitive world of high-stakes art collecting. The fact that art, the embodiment of beauty and humankind's highest aspirations, arouses villainy of appalling dimensions is a paradox Rothschild roundly threshes, along with the persistent denigration of women and the moral morass cracked open in war. But these dark matters are wrapped within the captivating story of Annie McDee, a young woman of small means and boundless passion for history and food, trying to mend a blasted heart, cope with her alcoholic mother, and succeed in London as a chef. When she purchases a grimy yet seductive old painting in a junk shop, she innocently sets off an art-world and geopolitical cataclysm. Though the storytelling machinery creaks a bit, Rothschild, the first woman to chair London's National Gallery, is a dazzling omniscient narrator giving voice to an irresistible cast of reprobates and heroes, from a secret Nazi to campy and conniving art-world players, Annie's persistent suitor, and the 300-year-old, long-lost masterpiece itself. An opulently detailed, suspensefully plotted, shrewdly witty novel of decadence, crimes ordinary and genocidal, and improbable love. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
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