This is a waltz through the high profile world of art auctions and provenances. The beautiful Flora is landed with an apartment full of paintings presumably liberated from the Jews in World War II by an infamous art dealer working for the Nazis. Karen Swan’s book has everything you need for a self-indulgent weekend escape curled up with a glass of wine. There is a dark handsome hero who has a bad reputation and a guess game that Swan maintains till the end.
As a fashion writer Swan is perfect where describing clothes is concerned and the Parisian twilight which she captures with elan. However, when character is concerned she occasionally seems to lay on the sentiment with a trowel. The strong, professional Flora has a weak side when faced with social confrontation and high life girls who behave badly and at one point it becomes a toss up as to whether Flora will keep her job and solve the secret of the apartment or succumb to a trembling lower lip.
In between traversing the French Riviera and Amsterdam while she looks for provenance clues Xavier the ‘prince of darkness’ turns out to have a deep dark secret on a very personal front but is smitten at first sight by Flora — who incidentally is never described except in terms of her beauty. It becomes a war between professional ethics and personal impulses, difficult for a 27-year-old into D&G who hasn’t been able to sleep four nights running and who has never been in love at a time when everyone on the jet set falls in and out of emotion with ease and when the social media is an intrusive presence ferreting out all kinds of secrets.
Swan’s novel is an easy read with interesting tidbits from the art world thrown in to add an extra fillip, though it doesn’t hold a candle to Hannah Rothschild’s The Improbability of Love. Nor does Swan pretend to be Rothschild — her task is simple to highlight the dilemma of professional girls and their quest for love, throw in a handsome hero, glamorous locations and leave it to the reader to unwind.
Anjana Basu is the author of Rhythms of Darkness
