Review: The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock

Title: The Paper Garden
Series: N/A
Author: Molly Peacock
Genre: Biography, Art   
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Received: From Publicist for Review
Release Date: October 2010
Pages: 416
Rating:


What is it About?
Poignant  memoir on artist Mary Granville Pendarves Delany and her life parallels to author Molly Peacock.

My Thoughts:

The title of this book is The Paper Garden : An Artist Begins Her Life’s Work At 72.  I want to state for those, like me, who had never hear of the artist Mary Granville Pendarves Delany technically she did not become an artist at 72 which is the impression I gathered from the title.  So just in case you thought the same that would be false.  She studied early on in life with art but the craft of Mosaic collage is what she know for starting especially depicting flowers in way no one had done before.  The works she did create where great in number and in detail from age 72 and on.

The book jumps back and forth between the artist, author and work of art.  Making layers of complex parallels.  Both artist and author had the blueprints of what would bring them together young in life.  Mary learned her art studied early in life.  She also had a love of gardens.  Molly had a love for art, writing and somehow always finding Mrs. Delany popping up in her life.

The book in some ways... well I hate to use the word dry but that is what I come up with.  I guess a better way to describe it would be so intelligent it goes over my head at some points.  That does not mean I did not like reading or enjoy it. It just means that well... I skimmed a lot.  When I do not understand something I tend to shake my head a smile, so I feel I did that with this book but I also feel I grasped the essence of it.  I think I did anyway.  
Each chapter had a way of becoming it’s own work of art as it worked in the parallel of the art the and the lives of the artists. I can see how some say this was like a collage about collage but very high class, which what Mary Delany was part of.  I think those with a higher understanding of words and art will enjoy this book maybe even love it.  I have to take it down a notch for going over my head though but still I learned things.


Website:

Author Molly Peacock’s Official Website
http://www.mollypeacock.org/

Theme Thursday - Any Action - The Paper Garden

An event hosted by Reading Between the Pages.
Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event that will be open from one thursday to the next. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:

• A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
• Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
• Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
• It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
  Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”

This will give us a wonderful opportunity to explore and understand different writing styles and descriptive approaches adopted by authors.

This week’s theme is

ANY ACTION (go, walk, close, clap etc)

My THURSDAY THEME for ANY ACTION is here.
 
"However ugly she thinks she can make herself, a seventeen-year-old is beautiful and young.  Mr. Billiers found her deliciously rude. Across the dinner table he flirted casually. from page 72 of The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock

Joining the High Summer Read- A -Thon July 25 - July 31

 

 

http://thetruebookaddict.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 The Blog True Book Addict is hosting the High Summer Read - A - Thon from July 25th through July 31st.

I thought I would join and try to catch up on some reading.   So all reviews this week will be of novel or novellas

Here is what I am going to try to get started on reading

The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar

The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72 by Molly Peacock

The Price of Freedom (Pirates of the Caribbean) by A.C. Crispin

The last is a pretty thick book so hopefully I will get done those.  I would like to do more then three of course but I am going to start with these three and see how i do.