hmmm...the author is a creative writing professor and there were parts of this that felt like she was doing an assignment for her own class. If an author is going to spend four pages describing someone lying in a field looking at a mole coming out its hole the writing better be so exquisite you don't mind that it has nothing to do with anything, and this wasn't. But I did stick with it, and it did pick up the pace a bit later. The story of Egon Schiele is an interesting one, and I'll give this book the benefit of three stars because it wasn't bad, by any stretch, I just might not have been in the mood to give it the patience it needs. ( )

A novel about the artist Egon Schiele and the people around him, especially his mistress and child he painted a nude portrait of. ( )