The Forest Lover

THE FOREST LOVER: Susan Vreeland: Viking Books: fiction: 304 pages

In her fourth novel (What Love Sees, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, and The Passion of Artemisia), Susan Vreeland again draws literary inspiration from the world of visual art. In this historic novel, she brings to life the world and work of Canadian artist Emily Carr. Born at the end of the Victorian era in Victoria, British Columbia; Carr broke with society’s and art’s conventions to pioneer modern art in North America. Her passion for native culture led her to travel extensively through the rugged Northern Canadian wilderness to preserve on canvas what remained of the vanishing tribal art and way of life.

Vreeland’s vivid writing captures the passion, turmoil, and complexity of Carr’s life as a “woman artist” (a term which Carr detested). Beginning when Carr is thirty, the story follows her from Victoria to Paris and back again on a quest to find the artistic fulfillment she yearns for. On the way she befriends Sophie, a native basket weaver; Fanny, a free-spirited artist from New Zealand; and Claude, a French-Canadian fur trader who wraps her in love and mink. Though the writing sometimes slows with philosophical discussions of color and technique, the story and Carr’s intense devotion carry the reader into the fascinating and contrasting worlds of modern art and ancient custom.

LG