SUSAN VREELAND
Tuesday, May 15 at 7:30 p.m.

At Elliott Bay, we are delighted to welcome back critically-acclaimed, bestselling novelist Susan Vreeland. Her art/artist-oriented novels and stories—which include Girl in Hyacinth Blue, The Passion of Artemisia, The Forest Lover, and Life Studies—have won her a unique (and large) readership. She reads here tonight from her newest, Luncheon of the Boating Party (Viking). "Once again—to the delight of her legion of fans—the bestselling author imaginatively uses art history as the basis for a carefully constructed historical novel. Vreeland turns this time to French impressionist master Auguste Renoir's famous painting 'Luncheon of the Boating Party,' which depicts a group of people (in 1880) enjoying leisure time on the terrace of a riverside restaurant. The current conditions in the life of the painter himself launch the author on an amazingly engrossing reinvigoration of the loves of the individuals who modeled for Renoir for that work, all of whom were actual people, and all are given a third dimension by Vreeland's lovely prose...There are, then, three levels of 'atmosphere' swirling through the pages of this riveting, complex novel..." - Brad Hooper, Booklist.

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