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Overview
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Oscar Feldman, the renowned figurative painter, has passed away. As his obituary notes, Oscar is survived by his wife, Abigail, their son, Ethan, and his sister, the well-known abstract painter Maxine Feldman. What the obituary does not note, however, is that Oscar is also survived by his longtime mistress, Teddy St. Cloud, and their daughters.
As two biographers interview the women in an attempt to set the record straight, the open secret of his affair reaches a boiling point and a devastating skeleton threatens to come to light. From the acclaimed author of The Epicure's Lament, a scintillating novel of secrets, love, and legacy in the New York art world.
Synopsis
Oscar Feldman, the renowned figurative painter, has passed away. As his obituary notes, Oscar is survived by his wife, Abigail, their son, Ethan, and his sister, the well-known abstract painter Maxine Feldman. What the obituary does not note, however, is that Oscar is also survived by his longtime mistress, Teddy St. Cloud, and their daughters.
As two biographers interview the women in an attempt to set the record straight, the open secret of his affair reaches a boiling point and a devastating skeleton threatens to come to light. From the acclaimed author of The Epicure's Lament, a scintillating novel of secrets, love, and legacy in the New York art world.
The New York Times - Janet Maslin
Though the women in Oscar's life are anything but amicable at the start of The Great Man, the book follows them through "a nice little volley of overdue spats and tantrums," as Teddy puts it. And Ms. Christensen does a funny, astute job of pulling the wool from their eyes. In a lesser novel these plot developments could easily occur in mechanical, sitcom fashion, but The Great Man is as unexpectedly generous as it is entertaining. Instead of milking the old feuds, it allows them to dissipate. Its real emphasis is not on Oscar's legacy but on the ways in which these women escape his shadow…Among Ms. Christensen's works The Great Man is a gentler book than The Epicure's Lament. (Her others are Jeremy Thrane and In the Drink.) It's also a wise and expansive one, and it allows its characters to flourish in unexpectedly rewarding ways.
Editorials
Janet Maslin
Though the women in Oscar's life are anything but amicable at the start of The Great Man, the book follows them through "a nice little volley of overdue spats and tantrums," as Teddy puts it. And Ms. Christensen does a funny, astute job of pulling the wool from their eyes. In a lesser novel these plot developments could easily occur in mechanical, sitcom fashion, but The Great Man is as unexpectedly generous as it is entertaining. Instead of milking the old feuds, it allows them to dissipate. Its real emphasis is not on Oscar's legacy but on the ways in which these women escape his shadow…Among Ms. Christensen's works The Great Man is a gentler book than The Epicure's Lament. (Her others are Jeremy Thrane and In the Drink.) It's also a wise and expansive one, and it allows its characters to flourish in unexpectedly rewarding ways.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
This penetratingly observed novel is less about the great man of its title than the women Oscar Feldman, fictional 20th-century New York figurative painter (and an infamous seducer of models as well as a neglectful father), leaned on and left behind: Abigail, his wife of more than four decades; Teddy, his mistress of nearly as many years; and Maxine, his sister, an abstract artist who has achieved her own lesser measure of fame. Five years after Feldman's death, as the women begin sketching their versions of him for a pair of admiring young biographers working on very different accounts of his life, long-buried resentments corrode their protectiveness, setting the stage for secrets to be spilled and bonds to be tested. Christensen (The Epicure's Lament) tells the story with striking compassion and grace, and her characters are fully alive and frankly sexual creatures. Distraction intrudes when real-world details are wrong (the A-train, for instance, doesn't run through the Bronx), and the novel's bookends-an obituary and a book review, both ostensibly from the New York Times-are less than convincing as artifacts. In all, however, this is an eloquent story posing questions to which there are no simple answers: what is love? what is family? what is art? (Aug.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationLibrary Journal
This novel might more accurately be titled "The Women Who Supported the Good Painter," since it's more about the three women in Oscar Feldman's life than it is about the fictional artist himself. There's his wife, Abigail, more friend than lover, the dedicated and lonely mother of his profoundly autistic son. Teddy was his soul mate, his long-term mistress, and mother of his twin daughters. His sister Maxine is also a painter, less well known but perhaps more talented. All have a deep affection for Oscar, complicated by their understanding of how he needed and devoured women in both his art-figurative paintings of the female nude-and his life. Now, with two researchers penning posthumous biographies about the great man, the women remember who they were with Oscar and discover who they have become. Christensen (The Epicure's Lament) excels at imagining the inner thoughts of this mixed trio of septuagenarians, especially regarding their sexuality. Not as strong are the poorly developed biographers, who, despite being African American and Caucasian, are equally bland and undistinguishable. A solid title; for most fiction collections.
—Christine Perkins