Mild fume

[orichalcum]

So my dad got me Tracy Chevalier's _Lady and the Unicorn_ for my birthday, which was an awesome present idea, as it's all about the Cluny Unicorn Tapestries which I love and have inherited small pictures of. Except - no spoilers here - but it's a profoundly irritating book in a couple of ways. The first, and most major, is that it's a book entirely about a work of art, which has _no_ picture of any of the six tapestries anywhere in it. I came home and looked at the ones on my wall, but come on! When you spend several pages talking about the significance of which way the lady's head is turned, it's nice to actually be able to look at it.

The other is that it has the problem of what I call the Unsympathetic Main Character. The only thing Nicolas, the main character, has going for him is that he's a good artist. Other than that he's totally worthless, and I am uninterested therefore in his life. He's not even a good villain.

I wanted to like this book so much...

Comments

[darkforge.livejournal.com]

I thought much the same thing about The Da Vinci Code, in which (ultra-minor spoilers) the author claims that there are hidden clues in various famous works of art (obviously, mostly by Da Vinci).

A picture's worth a thousand words, and when you've written a thousand words about a picture, including them both is worth... <tap> <tap> <tap> one MILLION DOLLARS! :-)_