Book Review: The Artist by Lucy Steeds
About the book
Provence, 1920.
Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle's artistic genius possible.
Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house. He believes he'll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe.
But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of darkness, Ettie has spent years cultivating hers.
Over this sweltering summer, everyone's true colours will be revealed. Because Ettie is ready to be seen.
Even if it means setting her world on fire.
Why we love it
Set in Provence in the summer of 1920, The Artist is, at its heart, a story which explores our need to be seen and recognised for who we truly are and the ways in which we can become invisible within our own lives if we let others define the story being told about us.
Ettie has devoted her life to making someone else's artistic life possible while remaining in the shadows herself. She is indispensable to her cruel and tyrannical uncle, renowned artist Edouard Tartuffe, and yet her own creativity is belittled and squashed by the life she's trapped in. Escape seems impossible until Joseph, a young art journalist, comes to visit in the hope of securing an interview with the reclusive painter.
Haunted by the choices he made during the First World War as a conscientious objector, Joseph carries the weight of his father’s disapproval and his experience of feeling misunderstood and unheard mirrors Ettie’s, Both desperately want to be seen and appreciated for who they are and as the summer progresses, they gradually reveal more and more of their inner selves to each other.
Against this emotional backdrop, the landscape of southern France is both beautiful and oppressive. Lucy Steeds captures the intensity of the suffocating heat in a way that mirrors the oppressive atmosphere of life in Tartuffe’s household. His controlling nature, his unpredictable anger and cruel outbursts create a sense of unease beneath the beauty of the French summer, turning the house into a place where power and fear shape every interaction.
I particularly loved the descriptions of food throughout the book. Vivid and visceral, they're filled with the textures and tastes of summer: fresh lemons, juicy peaches, and meals enjoyed beneath the Provençal sun. There's an almost cinematic quality to the book - the heat, the colours, the scent of citrus and the taste of summer fruit are vividly described, bringing the story to life in a compelling way.
But these moments of beauty are always connected to something darker, with this abundance of food becoming symbolic of the fine line between ripeness and rot, light and shade, creation and destruction.
On one level this is a sun-drenched novel of perfect landscapes and sensory pleasures, but on another it's a story of control, loneliness and the desperate human need to be understood. Powerful, atmospheric and beautifully written, The Artist is a book that asks who gets remembered, who gets erased, and what it takes to finally be seen.
