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摘要
摘要
"An American family summering in an unexpectedly traffic-choked and commercialized Provence discover a cache of pagan gold and set in motion a comic adventure of mistaken identity and misplaced ambition." "Vivian Hart, dismissed from her job lecturing on sex-in-art at a New Jersey community college, is badly in need of a kick start to her career, and wants to be a famous eco-feminist art critic. Her husband Richard yearns to purge his photographs of the curse of prettiness. Their golden opportunity arrives in the form of a classified ad, "Ideal sabbatical retreat in the south of France..."" "Reality intrudes on their dream of rusticity when they arrive to find their ancient stone farmhouse is the only remnant of a village bulldozed long ago to make way for the superhighway just outside their door." "For their children, Justin and Lily, the summer is a nightmare of boredom and neglect. There's really nothing at all to do but dredge some funny-looking old jewelry from the muck at the bottom of a nearby pond and sell it to their new friend, Marcel. When the artifacts begin turning up at roadside flea markets the expatriate art community scrambles to track down its source."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
评论 (4)
出版社周刊评论
The Peter Mayle-style fantasy of six months in Provence gets lightly sent up in nonfiction author Smith's (Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine) debut novel. Manhattan Upper West Sider Vivian Hart, at loose ends after getting fired as a lecturer in "eco-feminist art appreciation" at a New Jersey night school, relocates her family on the basis of a cryptic New York Review of Books classified ad: "Ideal sabbatical retreat in the South of France." The retreat quickly turns into a rout in a contemporary French countryside rife with traffic-choked farm roads, avaricious and surly locals and a village shrunk to a highway truck stop. While Vivian fruitlessly researches her vague book on impressionists, sex and gardening, and her photographer husband, Richard, hunts for commercially picturesque sights and avant-garde shots, their two homesick children's secret discovery of a cache of Celtic gold ornaments touches off an archeological treasure hunt. Smith's cast soon expands to Angela Thirkell-like dimensions to include latest Metropolitan Museum of Art director Hugo Bartello and his new wife, a former model; a Brooklyn expatriate tramp who calls himself Flic-Flac; and the inevitable pair of bumbling young lovers, architecture school refugee Peter Wall and pseudo-intellectual au pair Ariel Sterns. Good-natured sarcasm throughout highlights Smith's quick-witted, precise prose. With gentle irony about Americans abroad and the French at home, Smith concocts a sunny comedy of manners, artistic motives and tourist migration. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
《书目》(Booklist)书评
Smith, an award-winning nonfiction writer, brings her passion for history to her first novel, a smart and hilarious send-up of cultural pretension in general and France's carefully fashioned mystique in particular. Pseudo-art-historian Vivian and her photographer husband, Richard, need a break from New York and so arrange to spend the summer in fabled Provence. Expecting paradise, they land in a grimly ugly farmhouse across a busy highway from a sleazy truck stop. Her research thwarted, Vivian confides sexual fantasies to her computer, while Richard photographs bums and drunkards. Meanwhile, their neglected and entrepreneurial children discover a treasure trove of prehistoric Celtic gold artifacts. Soon everyone, including a vagrant, two lovestruck American students, and the director of the Museum of Metropolitan Art, has gold fever. Scintillatingly funny and wryly observant, Smith orchestrates a delirious comedy of errors that satirizes the affectation and greed of the art world along with myriad other forms of delusion. --Donna Seaman
Kirkus评论
A first novel of high comedy about would-be artists, art theorists, and trend-setters vacationing in Provence, from an author respected for her serious nonfiction (Patenting the Sun, 1990, etc.). Vivian Hart is an eco-feminist art historian, husband Richard a commercial photographer; both possess pretensions far outweighing their talents. In search of inspiration, they have dragged Justin and Lily, their less-than-endearing children, to Provence, an obvious (perhaps too obvious) venue for this kind of satire. The kids, homesick and ignored, happen upon a cache of Celtic artifacts they begin to sell at flea markets through a local dimwit. The odd coincidences of meeting and happenstance thus set in motion can't be explained in a few sentences, nor can the various theories of art that the characters expound ad nauseam, but in Smith's almost-too-meticulously structured novel, the headings pretty much tell all: ``Lost and Found,'' ``Crossroads,'' and ``Convergence.'' Framed by an elaborate structure reminiscent of a Restoration comedy of manners, Smith's modish cynicism is often quite funny, but it eventually grows wearying, particularly when the author begins to play favorites among her characters. Still, everyone ends up happy. The avaricious French landlord makes lots of money; the lonely young post-graduates (too gently depicted to be very interesting) find true love; the head of the Metropolitan Museum finds a new art craze to promote; his Lady Bountiful wife gets a trip to a spa; Vivian and Richard find crass commercial success; and Justin and Lily finally get to go home. With its in-joke quality, the story here will particularly entertain the intellectual and artistic elite Smith pokes fun at, but there are enough acid darts aimed at the rest of us to keep readers laughing'or at least smiling ruefully.
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
This tart and very funny first novel by the author of Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine gives the finger to Peter Mayle's obnoxiously smug books about living the good life in Provence. Laid off from her job as a feminist art history instructor at the Malcolm College of Knowledge, Vivian Hart and her husband, Richard, a commercial photographer and frustrated artist ("in his soul, hidden beneath his somewhat paunchy exterior, was a biting social critic"), decide to rent a rustic Proven?al farmhouse for six months so that they can fulfill their dreams of artistic glory. "Vivian imagined their half year in Provence. She would shut herself in a whitewashed bedroom and write with a broad-nibbed pen, just like Colette. Richard would get away from alcoholic ad directors and rediscover pure photography. For the children, it would be the opportunity of a lifetime." But seven-year-old Lily and 11-year-old Justin aren't so thrilled; dredging a nearby pond out of sheer boredom, they discover a cache of pagan gold and set off a chain of comic events and misunderstandings. An entertaining satire on artistic pretensions and greed, Fool's Gold is highly recommended for all collections.--Wilda Williams, "Library Journal" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.