The Lost Diaries of Frans Hals: A Novel [Anglais] [Broché]

From present-day New York to 17th-century Holland, this imaginative, enthralling first novel conjoins the marginalized struggles of two creative, impoverished and sometimes desperate men separated by more than three centuries. The first is famous Dutch painter Frans Hals, known only through his surviving works and the town archives of Haarlem, which contain information pertaining to marriages, births, deaths and a number of legal disputes. The second is Peter Van Overloop, a perennial Columbia graduate student who is hired by a Manhattan art dealer to translate and help authenticate several recently discovered volumes of an apparent Hals diary. As Peter works on the project he quickly identifies with the tumult and uncertainty of the artist's life: Peter himself, rendered temporarily homeless by a fire in his apartment, shuttles from place to place as he delves deeper into the ever more intriguing chronicle. Growing fond of the diarist's wry humor, wisdom and resilience through continuing hardship, Peter worries, even as he verifies each date and name, that some inconsistency will prove this character he so admires to be a fraud. Kernan writes evocatively of both Peter's modern-day Manhattan and Hals's Holland from 1616 to 1664. The artist's voice as he comments on painting and events in his life (from his early 30s into his early 80s), wittily enumerating his own foibles along with the strengths and meannesses of those around him, is seamlessly crafted and captivating. Cleverly offset by Kernan's contemporary frame, these beautifully realized diaries brim with timeless insights on matters both lofty and mundane. Four-page color insert.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

YA-A tale of two cities, 17th-century Haarlem in the Netherlands, and 20th-century Harlem in New York City, and two struggling artists, one the real-life Dutch painter Frans Hals, the other a Columbia University graduate student named Peter Van Overloop. The link is a set of diaries, supposedly written by Hals, found in a garage and passed from one person to another until they are finally entrusted to Van Overloop to translate and authenticate. From a clever weaving of fact and fiction emerges a vivid portrait of the artist and his era, offering comparisons with the contemporary young man's life and time. A four-page color insert showing some of the paintings referred to by Hals makes these "diaries" all the more realistic and engaging.
Pamela B. Rearden, Centreville Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

The "lost diaries of Frans Hals," discovered in an old barn, are assigned to bored graduate student Peter Van Overloop for translation. Are they authentic, or are they clever forgeries? As Peter becomes immersed in the translation, the diary entries succeed in giving Hals a distinctive voice, chronicling his daily life in the convincing detail that an artist would provide. Hals emerges from the pages of the diaries as a lusty, opinionated, improvident soul, passionately interested in the neighbors whose portraits he paints so brilliantly. Suspense mounts as details seem authentic, only to flag as Peter's story becomes intertwined with the artist's much more interesting tale; Peter's fecklessness proves more irritating than endearing. The novel does reach a satisfying conclusion, though, and overall this rates as an entertaining read for those who like to drop in on the lives of the gifted.
Beth Ann Mills, New Rochelle P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Recently, two inventive first-time novelists have taken a fresh approach to historical fiction and created fictional diaries of remarkable artists. The first was Jamie Fuller in The Diary of Emily Dickinson ; Kernan is the second. He chose the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Frans Hals because so little is known about his life, but also, we surmise, because Hals' earthy, affectionate portraits seem indicative of a passionate, unpretentious personality--in short, a great subject for a novel. The setup involves the discovery in a Long Island barn of what appear to be journals kept by the painter over the course of his long, cash-poor, but love-filled life. A gallery owner is consulted, and, leery of hoaxes, he decides to have the diaries translated. To keep things quiet, he tracks down a ne'er-do-well Dutch graduate student. Peter's life is chaotic and unsatisfying, but the minute he begins to read Hals' entries, he is hooked. And so we follow the parallel adventures of talented but bumbling Hals (by far, the more interesting of the two) and hapless Peter. Kernan's descriptions of Hals' hectic household, his deep attachment to his resilient wife and helpless infatuation with feisty student Judith Leyster, and his obsession with form and color and paint all make for a lively dramatization. Donna Seaman --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

This smart, funny first novel from a seasoned reporter contains layers of meaning, yet keeps up a light and appealing tone. When a young boy discovers a seemingly ancient four-volume journal in a Long Island garage, an art dealer hires Peter Van Overloop--a Columbia graduate student who defines the term ``slacker''--to translate it from the Dutch and assist in deciding whether or not it is the authentic, and therefore extremely lucrative, work of 17th-century Dutch painter Frans Hals (who lived in Haarlem). Van Overloop immediately gets caught up in Hals's problems while trying to ignore his own. While he is house-sitting a downtown loft, his Upper West Side apartment is decimated by a fire, and when the loft owner comes home unexpectedly he is forced to migrate from apartment to apartment, at one point staying with a waitress whose true vocation is ``parade art,'' meaning that with her friends she dresses up in surreal costumes--her favorite is a vulva--and meanders through the park in her spare time. Meanwhile, Hals is dealing with almost constant poverty, the death of his first wife and subsequent marriage to an illiterate but loving woman, even another man in Haarlem of the same name who has been publicly chastised for beating his wife. There is no stiff historical prose, since Van Overloop has been instructed to translate the writing into everyday English. The diary, in fact, makes engrossing reading. Frans Hals emerges as tremendously human: At one point he masturbates while spying on his prot‚g‚e as she takes a bath; after his first wife's death, he torments himself with a memory of having slapped her back while she was ill. A loopy tale that manages to be both intellectual and fun. (4- page color insert of Hals's paintings, not seen) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"Wonderfully imagined and meticulously described, the story throbs with vitality and warmth." --The Los Angeles Times

"Delightful...the beguiling creating of a clever author's whimsy." --The New Yorker

"From present-day New York to seventeenth-century Holland, this imaginative, enthralling first novel conjoins the marginalized struggles of two creative, impoverished and sometimes desperate men separated by more thn three centuries...These beautifully realized diaries brim with timeless insights on matters both lofty and mundane." --Publishers Weekly

"Engaging...elegantly straightforward." --Philadelphia Inquirer

"Grand fiction, with an absolutely perfect ending. A great read." --Detroit Free Press

When ancient notebooks turn up in a Long Island garage, Peter Van Overloop, a Columbia graduate student, sets to translating them, and finds himself immersed in the life and times of the Dutch painter Frans Hals. for the notebooks seem to be Hal's diaries, and they contain a fascinating portrait of a man living in the age of Rembrandt and Descartes, and bursting with a lust for the world that surrounds him. Emerging as a thoroughly funny, charming man, Hals reaches out from centuries past to touch and change Peter's life forever.
A seamless merging of literary invention and historic fact, The Lost Diaries of Frans Hals is a remarkable, unforgettable novel.

Diaries found in a Long Island garage just might be the work of famed Dutch portrait painter Frans Hals--or they may be clever forgeries. When a Columbia graduate student is hired to translate and corroborate, he finds a world rich with color, drama, and emotion.

Michael Kernan was a reporter for the Washington Post for twenty-three years. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.