A Nearly Perfect Copy
Allison Amend, 2013
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385536691
Summary
Elm Howells has a loving family and a distinguished career at an elite Manhattan auction house. But after a tragic loss throws her into an emotional crisis, she pursues a reckless course of action that jeopardizes her personal and professional success.
Meanwhile, talented artist Gabriel Connois wearies of remaining at the margins of the capricious Parisian art scene, and, desperate for recognition, he embarks on a scheme that threatens his burgeoning reputation. As these narratives converge, with disastrous consequences, A Nearly Perfect Copy boldly challenges our presumptions about originality and authenticity, loss and replacement, and the perilous pursuit of perfection. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 04, 1972 (guesstimate)
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford Uiversity; M.F.A., Iowa
Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Allison Amend was born in Chicago, Illinois, on a day when the Cubs beat the Mets 2-0. In high school, she lived for a year with a Spanish family in Barcelona and now speaks fluent Catalan. She attended Stanford University, and, though she dropped out three times, managed to graduate with honors in Comparative Literature. She spent her junior year pretending to attend the Sorbonne in Paris.
After college, she returned to France on a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship in Lyon, where she taught high school English and mistranslated documents for the Lyon Opera. Allison then attended the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, receiving a Maytag and a Teaching/Writing Fellowship. While there, she learned never to live downwind from a pig farm and how to put English on the cue ball.
Allison’s debut short story collection, Things That Pass for Love (2008) won a bronze Independent Publisher’s award. Stations West, a historical novel, was published by Louisiana State University Press as part of its Yellow Shoe Fiction series in March 2010 and was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Oklahoma Book Award.
Her second novel, A Nearly Perfect Copy was published in 2013.
Allison lives in New York City, where she teaches creative writing at Lehman College in the Bronx and for Red Earth MFA. (From the author's website .)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [C]lever, wry.... American art expert Elm Howells enjoys her work at Tinsley’s, the auction house her great-grandfather founded, but the recent loss of her young son has become an obsession she can’t shake. When she learns at a party that the hosts plan to clone their dead dog in Europe, Elm sets off on an unlikely path to get her precious son back—literally....but cloning isn’t cheap and she enters into a complicated moral dilemma. Amend makes her characters immediately real, depicting their complicated desires and decisions in a highly enjoyable, nearly perfect novel.
Publishers Weekly
Amend presents a tangled tale of two unrelated characters under grave emotional duress whose actions affect each other indelibly, though they remain strangers for the duration of the novel.... Verdict: Although the story line is provocative and intriguing, and some fine characterization develops, eventually, this book will appeal more to readers in the know regarding the art world than to a more general audience. —Joyce Townsend, Pittsburg, CA
Library Journal
[Written] with supple command, caustic wit, and a deep fascination with decent people who lose their moral compass ... As Amend tracks the descent of her two wounded and alienated innocents into lies, desperation, and crime, her visual acuity, fluent psychology, venture into the shadow side of the art world, and storytelling verve make for a blue-chip novel of substance and suspense.
Booklist
Gabriel--a gifted copyist and mimic who owes his start in the art world to his perfect replica of a painting by his famous forebear that hung in his childhood house--gets tempted, bit by bit, into a scheme that seems simultaneously to lay waste to and to fulfill his ambitions...and Elm, too, is swept into the conspiracy, at the other end, by her desperation to replace the son she lost. Amend provides a fizzy, entertaining insider's look at the conjunction of visual art and commerce—especially the world of art auctions.... A few preposterous plot points, but overall, this is a quick, provocative and likable read
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What role does provenance play in the novel, in terms of both art and people? What are Elm and Gabriel’s origins and how do their family legacies affect them? How do wealth and/or birthright contribute to Elm and Gabriel’s feelings of entitlement?
2. Family can be, by turns, a blessing and a burden. How do the characters reflect these attitudes?
3. The novel is told in alternating narratives. How do the two stories mirror each other? How are they different?
4. When Gabriel suggests to his mother that they sell the Febrer painting, his mother likens the painting to “a part of our family,” while Gabriel counters that it’s “a piece of cloth with some decorative oil.” Which sentiment do you agree with? Does art have intrinsic value, or only the value we assign it?
5. On page 134, Klinman says to Gabriel, “Say you borrow twenty euros from someone. Then you pay them back. Does it have to be the same twenty euros? Of course not.” How does this analogy hold up when applied to fine art?
6. How does Gabriel’s sense of alienation affect him? When people are marginalized—whether by choice or circumstance—do you think they’re more likely to behave dishonorably?
7. As a society, we are increasingly concerned with authenticity, and yet advancements in technology and science have made duplication easier than ever. What are some examples of this? When is copying objectionable and when is it beneficial?
8. Deception is a recurring motif in the novel. Which characters commit deceit and which characters are deceived? Did Colin’s admission to Elm change your feelings about him? About her own duplicity?
9. Klinman justifies his dishonesty by sharing the proceeds of his forgeries with victims of the Nazis. Does this make his crime morally defensible?
(Questions issued by publisher.)