Greenwich Village, 1959. Claire Bishop sits for a portrait -- a gift from her husband -- only to discover that what the artist has actually depicted is Claire's suicide. Haunted by the painting, Claire is forced to redefine herself within a failing marriage and a family history of madness. Shifting ahead to 2004, we meet West, a young man with schizophrenia who is obsessed with a painting he encounters in a gallery: a mysterious image of a woman's suicide. Convinced it was painted by his ex-girlfriend, West constructs an elaborate delusion involving time-travel, Hasidism, art-theft, and the terrifying power of representation. When the two characters finally meet, in the present, delusions are shattered and lives are forever changed.
The Suicide of Claire Bishop is a dazzling debut, evocative of Michael Cunningham's
The Hours (and Virginia Woolf's classic
Mrs. Dalloway), as well as Donna Tartt's bestseller
The Goldfinch. With high stakes that reach across American history, Carmiel Banasky effortlessly juggles balls of madness, art theft, and Time itself, holding the reader in a thrall of language and personal consequences. Daring, sexy, emotional,
The Suicide of Claire Bishop heralds Banasky as an important new talent.
Author: Carmiel Banasky
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 11/08/2016
Pages: 392
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9781941088593
About the Author
Carmiel Banasky is a writer and teacher from Portland, OR. Her work has appeared in Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, Slice, Guernica, PEN America, The Rumpus, and NPR, among other places. She earned her MFA from Hunter College and lives in Los Angeles, CA.
