From Booklist
Eberstadt's new novel flows like a sun-spangled brook on a bright spring day. It continues the saga of New Hampshireman Isaac Hooker that began in Isaac and His Devils (1991), but no prior knowledge of Isaac is required for total immersion in this astute, animated, and funny tale about the sublime and the ridiculous in love and art. Isaac is destitute when he first moves to New York City, but various guardian angels take him under their wings and soon he begins to paint. Full of tumultuous if naive passion, Isaac barges into the oh-so-chic art world like a bull in a china shop, his narrative paintings rampant with color, mythic eroticism, and biblical drama. His most ardent champion is Dolly Gebler, the formidable head of a generous arts foundation and the wife of a man of tremendous charm and epic debauchery. Dolly and Isaac fall in love, and things get very complicated. Each page is an adventure as Eberstadt animates her marvelous characters, struts her fine psychological stuff, and offers provocative musings on the meaning of art and the nature of love. Donna Seaman
From Kirkus Reviews
An ambitious, intelligent portrait of the emergence of a gifted painter, and a sly, convincing depiction of the exotic fringes of the New York art scene. Isaac Hooker (introduced in Eberstadt's Isaac and His Devils, 1991) is, as the novel begins, a hapless if brilliant young man adrift in Manhattan, having fled New Hampshire (and his loyal girlfriend) to make something of himself. Gradually, he discovers an almost obsessive interest in painting, using his (at first) crude, urgent works to come to grips with the painful realities of his past. Eberstadt is particularly deft in catching the way in which art can take over one's life, overriding all other responsibilities, and in tracing the manner in which the troubled, reflective Isaac begins to think his way into what art means to him. Isaac, living hand to mouth, manages to talk his way into a part-time job with the glittering Aurora Foundation, known for its generosity in sponsoring highly idiosyncratic artists. He also swiftly becomes entwined with the sponsors of the Foundation, Dolly and Alfred Gebler. Dolly, an heiress, ``didn't believe in nickle- and-diming; she thought art could change the world.'' She handed her artists ``scads of unfettered money; she bought them space and time.'' And while she has always carefully kept herself somewhat removed from her artists, a benevolent but distant Lady Bountiful, she finds herself falling in love with the rough, bemused Isaac. Alfred watches first with disbelief, and then with increasing anger, as Dolly and Isaac become lovers. Eberstadt's portraits of the anxious New York avant garde, of painters and performance artists and would-be street poets, of mercenary dealers and edgy critics, is sharp and refreshingly tough-minded. Primarily, though, the novel is a study of the coming-of-age of a visionary painter, and as such it is both original and deeply persuasive. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
FROM NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
There are many pleasures here, one of which derives from Ms. Eberstadt's affectionate observation of New York. An avant-garde opera attracts "a honking, hissing gaggle of young men in spatter-painted dinner jackets and military buzz cuts." Moreover, Ms. Eberstadt loves art, all sorts of art, and writes about it with joyful comprehension . . . . As an intelligent, exhilarating gallop through a rich, glittering landscape, this makes a wonderful jaunt. -- The New York Times Book Review, Roxana Robinson
FROM BOMB
Recommended reading for all lapsed moralists and fringe visionaries.