Blue Nude--#57 finished

An interesting book that grew on me the more I read it. An artist and art teacher, Danzig, brought in a model for his class & she became in a sense his muse that in the end reawakened his art. It goes in to the back story of both Danzig and the model Merav. Danzig growing up in post WWII Germany to a father that was a Nazi war criminal. The book talks about Danzig's older sister who committed suicide because she could not reconcile her life after WWII, where she was pulled in as a child to the Nazi thought and how she realized her father was basically evil and she did not want to continue living with part of him being in herself. The book doesn't actually say how much of this influenced Danzig or since he was a child how much he realized what was going on. In the end he uses Merav to reawaken his art because he sees his sister in her.

Merav is Jewish and her mother is a Holocaust surviver. Merav is born in Israel and grows up on a kibbutz. Her childhood friend and then lover is killed in a bus bomb and this forces her to leave Israel and move to the US. She becomes an art model and the book goes into her earlier marriage to a photographer as well.

I really enjoyed this book by the end. At the beginning it was a little hard to get into and I wasn't sure what the book was all about. It is a very good book that makes you think as well as just enjoy the depth of the characters.

I have posted it on PBS, it is the only copy on the system now. Earlier there was one WL for this book when I started it but it disappeared a week ago, I guess someone else had a copy they mailed or the WL person went on hold or removed it or something else. I figure this book will get requested at some point, hopefully sooner than some of the duds on my PBS shelf.