At a glance:
- Author: Eva Figes
- First Published: 1983
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Fable
- Time of Work: One day in the summer of 1900
- Setting: Giverny, France
- Characters: Claude Monet, Alice Monet, Marthe, Lily, James, Octave Mirbeau, Anatole Toussaint, Germaine, Jean-Pierre
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Impressionistic literature, Novel
- Subjects: Family or family life, France or French people, Nature, Art or artists, Marriage, Alienation, Guilt, Social life, Emotions, Obsession, Eighteenth century, Death or dying, Painting or painters, Loneliness, Ponds, Victorian era or Victorianism, Gardens or gardening, Impressionism, Light
- Locales: France, Europe, Giverny, France
Form and Content
Light is an impressionist painting in words. It depicts a single day at Claude Monet’s gardens at Giverny, seeking to render with word and metaphor the kind of impressionist portrait Monet himself might have painted. Monet spent his painting career stalking the transient perfection of a single moment in time, replete with shadows and reflection. He looked for eternal truth in momentary situations. Eva Figes paints him in poetic prose, caught in the bubble of light from a single day’s sun. Yet that moment carries the weight not only of the present...
(The entire page is 2246 words.)
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