The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

July 19, 2021
Gibbon (Paris Red) offers a poignant evocation of impressionist master Édouard Manet’s final years. By Manet’s late 40s, the syphilis he’d contracted decades earlier has made devastating inroads into his comfort, energy, and mobility. In 1880, a lifelong friend suggests he begin recording his thoughts in a journal. Initially unconvinced, Manet soon appreciates the consolation of his brief, unguarded jottings and reflections on his past. His early entries describe brutal hydrotherapy treatments for the syphilis and the severe pain he feels, as well as the kindness of a kitchen maid who supports him while he struggles to walk through the garden to observe the lush peonies, and memories of women’s sensuality. Over the next three years, he staves off financial problems by selling what paintings he can, enjoys belated honors from a world that had previously spurned his art, and attempts to hide his growing debility from everyone except his family, doctor, and a few intimate friends. Manet completes major works including A Bar at the Folies-Bergère while suffering increasingly agonizing symptoms, which drive him to try a new medication despite warnings that it could risk his life. Though the notebook’s brief, episodic texts never gather much in the way of momentum, Gibbon speaks eloquently of the human capacity to live fully amid devastating challenges. It’s well done, though for a novel about an innovative artist, it’s also remarkably tame.

Starred review from July 1, 2021
Gibbon is enthralled with painter �douard Manet. In Paris Red (2015), she focused on his relationship with Victorine Louise Meurent, who is immortalized in Manet's once shocking Olympia. Here Gibbon imagines a journal the elegantly and courageously radical artist might have kept during his last three years as he fought valiantly against the cruel disease that ended his life at 51. Vehemently criticized, the future revered ""Father of Modernism"" keeps painting in spite of the horrific emotional and physical ravages of syphilis. When a friend brings him a notebook, Manet writes, "I will try to say here in these pages what I cannot paint." His entries are epigrammatic ("I esteem the ephemeral"), philosophical, and rhapsodic. "The trick is always to be in love," he recalls Victorine telling him. "Not just in love with a person but with things." Manet's passions are for color, dragonflies, a cat, and, most of all, flowers. Gibbon also discerns Manet's deep admiration for women as he finds his final muse, Suzon Tonnerre, who inspires his last grand masterpiece, A Bar at the Folies-Berg�re. Emulating in words what Manet expressed in paint with his deft yet deeply evocative touch, Gibbon's empathic portrait reaches to the bruised heart of creativity to elucidate how art sustains the soul and redeems a life.

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September 1, 2021

Gibbon's latest novel (Paris Red; Thief) delivers just what the title promises: a journal purporting to be the notebook of the artist himself, delivered via sympathetic lady's maid. The journal begins with Manet's treatment for syphilis at a Bellevue clinic just outside Paris, with his family in tow. His narrative, full of details both personal and political, closely tracks his artworks and efforts to be recognized by the disapproving salon. The thoughts he pens in his journal are an artist's thoughts; he observes his surroundings, he examines his past, and he analyzes his interior while remaining steadfastly himself. As his health deteriorates, he alternately struggles with and rallies to his art, making his mark on a changing artistic and political scene. VERDICT Reminiscent of Victorian fiction, this epistolary novel reads as intimately as a found artifact from Manet himself. Readers may find it difficult to extract themselves from the story to recall that this is not in fact a primary source but rather a constructed narrative. This compelling and revealing book furthers a cultural understanding of Manet's place in time and art, a difficult task for a difficult character. Very well done.--Julie Kane, Washington & Lee Lib., Lexington, VA

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