I launched this novel reading year in review with recommendations for two books about female artists.

(Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun)

Georgia by Dawn Tripp is a fascinating fictionalization of the life of Georgia O’Keeffe. The Muralist by B.A. Shapiro, with its main character Alizée Benoit, is overtly political. The fictional Benoit shares O’Keeffe’s struggles to be taken seriously as an artist, but Benoit is also consumed with fear and outrage over the fate of Jewish people in Europe during World War II.

Today’s pair of recommendations are novels about the Holocaust. My 5-star rating went to:

Late in the war, twin sisters Pearl and Stasha arrive in Auschwitz where they are subjected to Josef Mengele’s medical experiments. When Pearl disappears, Stasha cannot believe her sister is dead. The story is horrifying and harrowing, yet full of hope.

Very nearly 5 stars is:

Also focusing on children, equally harrowing and horrifying, Shepard’s novel is set in the Warsaw ghetto. Young teen Aron gradually loses his family and ends up in the ghetto’s orphanage, protected by the once-influential Dr. Janusz Korczak.

I liked Konar’s book a bit more because it is a story about sisters. I also admired her deft depictions of Mengele’s brutality–crystal clear without being gratuitously graphic. And Konar managed true, beautiful voices for twins who, despite outward appearances, are so very different.

Stay tuned. The next two novels deal with mothers and daughters.

I write nonfiction history, real life tales of extra/ordinary women. This means I do a lot of research, not only in rich and compelling primary sources but also in a wide swath of secondaries. My leisure reading, then, is all about fiction.

(Vanessa Bell)

I read over 50 novels in 2016, most of which were historical fiction. My next few posts will be devoted to the best books I read this year (though they weren’t necessarily published in 2016).

I’m not limiting myself to 10 books. While that’s a neat number, it’s arbitrary. In 2016, for example, I ranked 4 novels as 5-star reads, but I liked an additional 13 very much.

The first of the 5-star novels is:

Tripp did a marvelous job of imagining the life and career of painter Georgia O’Keeffe. I didn’t know much about O’Keeffe, but I do know quite a lot about women’s lives in the 20th century. Tripp deftly handled the historical context while providing a complex, compelling portrait of a talented and driven woman. The novel is every bit as gorgeous as O’Keeffe’s paintings.

Another work of historical fiction about a female artist that I liked a lot is:

Shapiro’s main character is a fictional female artist hired by one of the New Deal programs in the 1930s. Increasingly radicalized by the politics of the times, Alizée makes a fateful decision to try to help the European Jews being crushed by Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies. Some of the real-life historical figures who appeared in the book didn’t always quite ring true for me, but the character of Alizée is fascinating.

Up next: another pairing of a 5-star novel with one that came pretty close.