Synopses & Reviews
A stunning story of love, sexual obsession, treachery, and tragedy, about an artist and her most famous muse in Paris between the world wars.
Paris, 1927. In the heady years before the crash, financiers drape their mistresses in Chanel, while expatriates flock to the avant-garde bookshop Shakespeare and Company. One day in July, a young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a coolly dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka.
Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist, a dispossessed Saint Petersburg aristocrat with a murky past. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara's most iconic Jazz Age images, among them her most accomplished-and coveted-works of art. A season as the painter's muse teaches Rafaela some hard lessons: Tamara is a cocktail of raw hunger and glittering artifice. And all the while, their romantic idyll is threatened by history's darkening tide.
Inspired by real events in de Lempicka's history, The Last Nude is a tour de force of historical imagination. Ellis Avery gives the reader a tantalizing window into a lost Paris, an age already vanishing as the inexorable forces of history close in on two tangled lives. Spellbinding and provocative, this is a novel about genius and craft, love and desire, regret and, most of all, hope that can transcend time and circumstance.
Review
"As erotic and powerful as the paintings that inspired it, Avery's artist-muse love story is moreover a tale of money, class and betrayal."
Review
"The Last Nude is a remarkable novel: at once a seductive evocation of Lost Generation Paris, a faithful literary rendering of Tamara de Lempicka's idiosyncratic and groundbreaking art, and a vibrant, intelligent, affecting story in its own right. It's also smoking hot."
Review
"A sly, sleekly written stereograph of art, desire, and desperation in Paris in the '20s, The Last Nude brings Rafaela to electric life, much as Tamara de Lempicka did when she painted her."
Review
“[An] amazing book . . . wholly original and engrossing.”—
The Boston Globe
“The Last Nude breaks important ground for literature, and does so with exuberance, skill, and grace.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A compulsively readable novel.”—The Washington Post
“A taut, elegant novel . . . [Avery’s] prose sings.”—MORE Magazine
“Seductive and compelling, the novel is painted with as much drama and precision as one of Lempicka’s canvases.”—The Daily Beast
“A sly, sleekly written stereograph of art, desire, and desperation in Paris in the ’20s, The Last Nude brings Rafaela to electric life, much as Tamara de Lempicka did when she painted her.”—Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh
“The Last Nude is a remarkable novel: at once a seductive evocation of Lost Generation Paris, a faithful literary rendering of Tamara de Lempicka's idiosyncratic and groundbreaking art, and a vibrant, intelligent, affecting story in its own right. It’s also smoking hot.”—Emily Barton, author of Brookland
“Ellis Avery transports the reader on a fast-paced magic-carpet ride to Paris between the world wars, a time when artists, patrons, and models fused the business of sex and art, with deeply painful results.”—Aaron Hamburger, author of Faith for Beginners
“The Last Nude carries us through one of the most fascinating and turbulent periods in modern art, and into the minds and bodies of two of art history’s most riveting heroines. With prose and imagery that are both lyrical and unabashedly sensual, Ellis Avery breathes life and depth into famed artist’s muse Rafaela, tracing her rocky but thrilling path from lost girl to Lost Generation icon, and laying bare acts of love, desire and betrayal with all the assuredness of a master artist herself.”—Jennifer Cody Epstein, author of The Painter from Shanghai
Review
"Provides true pleasure to the intellect and all the senses."
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Ellis Avery studied tea ceremony for several years, so it makes sense that the ritual dominates her first novel. She shares every subtlety of the ancient art...Attention to detail is admirable...Urako is a compelling character."
—Entertainment Weekly
"Saturated with color and detail; [Avery] manages to make nineteenth-century Japan both accessible and exotic, infusing her story with a sense of dignified calm...[A] deeply engrossing, multifaceted work."
—The Boston Globe
"A magisterial novel that is equal parts love story, imaginative history and bildungsroman, a story as alluring as it is powerful."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A memorable saga...Avery adroitly conveys the intricacies of the tea ceremony, 'the language of diplomacy,' and the subtle ways in which it was transformed as Japan moved from a Shogun society to one ruled by the emperor. At the same time, she illuminates vivid period details."
—Booklist
"Avery writes with a self-assured lyricism...Quite arresting...confident [and] original."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Readers who enjoy historical fiction will be dazzled by Avery's attention to detail, savoring her descriptions...Those who like plot twists will relish the epic cast of characters...An homage to Virgina Woolf's Orlando in both style and theme, Avery's ambitious andeavor is the perfect companion for a series of cold winter nights."
—Library Jounral
"In The Teahouse Fire, aesthetic rules vie with politics, sex, and human feeling. Avery has whipped up a heady brew."
—Liza Dalby, author of The Tale of Murasaki
Synopsis
The story of two women whose lives intersect in late nineteenth century Japan,
The Teahouse Fire is also a portrait of one of the most fascinating places and times in all of history-Japan as it opens its doors to the West. Told through the enchanting and unforgettable voice of Aurelia, an American orphan adopted by proprietors of a tea ceremony school, this is "a magisterial novel that is equal parts love story, imaginative history and bildungsroman, a story as alluring as it is powerful" (
Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Synopsis
“As erotic and powerful as the paintings that inspired it.”—Emma Donoghue, author of Room
Paris, 1927. One day in July, a young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a coolly dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka. Struggling to support herself, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist, a dispossessed Saint Petersburg aristocrat with a murky past. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara’s most iconic Jazz Age images, among them her most accomplished—and coveted—works of art. A season as the painter’s muse teaches Rafaela some hard lessons: Tamara is a cocktail of raw hunger and glittering artifice. And all the while, their romantic idyll is threatened by history’s darkening tide. A tour de force of historical imagination, The Last Nude is about genius and craft, love and desire, regret and, most of all, hope that can transcend time and circumstance.
Synopsis
As erotic and powerful as the paintings that inspired it.”Emma Donoghue, author of Room
Paris, 1927. In the heady years before the crash, financiers drape their mistresses in Chanel, while expatriates flock to the avant-garde bookshop Shakespeare and Company. One day in July, a young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a coolly dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka.
Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist, a dispossessed Saint Petersburg aristocrat with a murky past. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara's most iconic Jazz Age images, among them her most accomplished-and coveted-works of art. A season as the painter's muse teaches Rafaela some hard lessons: Tamara is a cocktail of raw hunger and glittering artifice. And all the while, their romantic idyll is threatened by history's darkening tide.
Inspired by real events in de Lempicka's history, The Last Nude is a tour de force of historical imagination. Ellis Avery gives the reader a tantalizing window into a lost Paris, an age already vanishing as the inexorable forces of history close in on two tangled lives. Spellbinding and provocative, this is a novel about genius and craft, love and desire, regret and, most of all, hope that can transcend time and circumstance.
Synopsis
Like attending seasons of elegant tea partieseach one resplendent with character and drama. Delicious.”Maxine Hong Kingston The story of two women whose lives intersect in late-nineteenth-century Japan, The Teahouse Fire is also a portrait of one of the most fascinating places and times in all of historyJapan as it opens its doors to the West. It was a period when wearing a different color kimono could make a political statement, when women stopped blackening their teeth to profess an allegiance to Western ideas, and when Japans most mysterious ritethe tea ceremonybecame not just a sacramental meal, but a ritual battlefield.
We see it all through the eyes of Aurelia, an American orphan adopted by the Shin family, proprietors of a tea ceremony school, after their daughter, Yukako, finds her hiding on their grounds. Aurelia becomes Yukakos closest companion, and they, the Shin family, and all of Japan face a time of great challenges and uncertainty. Told in an enchanting and unforgettable voice, The Teahouse Fire is a lively, provocative, and lushly detailed historical novel of epic scope and compulsive readability.
About the Author
Ellis Avery’s first novel, The Teahouse Fire, set in the tea ceremony world of nineteenth-century Japan, has been translated into five languages and has won three awards, including the American Library Association Stonewall Award. Avery is also the author of The Smoke Week, an award-winning 9/11 memoir. She teaches fiction writing at Columbia University and lives in New York City.