Book review-The Muralist

I have been able to find a lot of good fiction on Overdrive lately.  Recently I finished The Muralist (or here for the e-audio book) by B A Shapiro.  It is another book in a long line of recent fiction that is set during World War II. This book is set primarily in New York City and alternates between the early 1940s and current time.  The main character in the 1940s is Alizee Benoit, an Jewish American painter with French family, working with the WPA on public murals.  The main character in the current time is Alizee's grand niece Danielle Abrams, an artist working with Sotheby's.  Danielle comes across some paintings hidden behind other works that she is sure are Alizee's work.  No one believes her so she takes it upon herself to investigate.  Part of her difficulty is that there are not very many of Alizee's works to compare them to because she disappeared in late 1940. Alizee convinces Eleanor Roosevelt to encourage the WPA to include Abstract Impressionist art in some of the murals.  She learns that her family in France is struggling with the growing Nazi threat and she trys to get visas for them.  We learn about her difficulties as Danielle pieces things together. I enjoyed this book quite a bit.  It was interesting to read about the events leading up to the US's entry into World War II and how different people viewed it-especially after reading a number of novels that took place in Europe during the same time period.  The characters were very interesting and I learned a lot about Abstract Impressionism.

The Muralist By Shapiro, B. A. 2015-11 - Algonquin Books 9781616203573 Check Our Catalog When Alizee Benoit, a young American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), vanishes in New York City in 1940, no one knows what happened to her. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Not her arts patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. Not her close-knit group of friends and fellow WPA painters, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee …More

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