A deep dive into the world of art
Thomas Schlesser’s “Mona’s Eyes” is a slow motion read that will baffle readers looking for a conventional pathway to storytelling.
Ten-year-old Mona lives with her parents, Camille and Paul, in Paris. One day, she inexplicably goes blind. Her worried parents rush her off to the doctor, but on their arrival Mona regains her vision. The doctor and staff of the hospital are baffled; the parents and Mona are terrified.
A battery of tests and other visits are scheduled, as well as some visits with a child psychologist.
Enter Henry Vuillemin, Mona’s beloved octogenarian grandfather, a retired photojournalist once wounded in war — he lost sight in one eye — and a lover of art. “This disability, combined with his great height and, as the years went by, increasingly extreme thinness, had given his appearance a supernatural aura. The handsome reporter … had turned into a legendary character.”
When Henry proposes — “demands” might be the better word — that he take charge of Mona’s visits to the psychologist every Wednesday afternoon, his daughter Camille consents. Instead of going to a clinic, however, for the next 52 weeks Henry and Mona visit art museums, beginning with the Louvre. At her grandfather’s request, she studies one piece of art every week, followed by a discussion led by Henry of the painting or sculpture’s importance and message. They conceal these visits from Camille and Paul.
Here is where the novel turns into a textbook tour of 500 years of European masterpieces. Though there is drama within Mona’s family, and though we learn more about Henry, the story becomes more a meditation on art than a fiction. Fearing that his granddaughter may end up truly and permanently blind, Henry wants to give her a gift of beauty that will last her a lifetime. Consequently, he gives the reader this same gift.
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Here, too, is where “Mona’s Eyes” may lack appeal to a good number of readers. Henry’s explanations of the artists and their works require us either to slow down and absorb these 52 lessons, or to skip through them to chase after the story. That Thomas Schlesser is an art historian at the Ecole Polytechnique comes as no surprise. That this debut work of fiction was a European and international bestseller, translated into 38 languages, does surprise.
As part of the museum visits, Schlesser includes a long paragraph describing each painting, but the descriptions, even when closely read, lack the power to conjure up the actual canvas in the ordinary reader’s imagination. They distract more than edify. Here the old adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” is definitely at play.
Either the publishers or Schlesser recognized this difficulty before putting out the book, and decided to solve the problem with the dust jacket. Remove the jacket from the book, unfold it, and all 52 paintings appear on what amounts to a small poster. It’s a clever solution. Readers wanting larger depictions of the paintings can, of course, find them online.
As for me, I am still working my way through the novel. When I selected the book from the shelves in my public library, I assumed it was a novel touching on art. Only when I really started reading did I realize it was a museum guide touched by fiction. So far, these tours through the Louvre and Henry’s have slowed my reading to a couple of chapters a night. Even at that pace, I’m sure I’m missing some of the good stuff in “Mona’s Eyes.” Several times, opening the book for my nightly visit, Fitzgerald’s last line of “Gatsby” came to mind: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly back into the past.” My reading has become a bit of a battle waged between sloth and a desire to learn more about art.
“Mona’s Eyes” has also led me to wonder about the cause of its popularity among Europeans. It’s advertised as “The Sensational #1 International Bestseller,” yet either that claim is false or the allure is perplexing. Are the French, Germans, English, and Italians really snapping up copies of this sometimes-tedious story? Are they reading it as an homage to the past and a reminder of their heritage, or does it serve more as a long and poignant goodbye to a culture in danger of erasure by economic decline and mass immigration?
Whatever the case, Schlesser’s novel is on the idiosyncratic side of contemporary literature, which can be, I suppose, both a plus and a minus. If you’re looking for something different than the usual fictional fare of fantasy, romance and shoot-em-up suspense books, particularly if you have interest in art and aesthetics, then I recommend you take a look at “Mona’s Eyes.”
(Jeff Minick reviews books and has written four of his own: two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust On Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
