Sirens & Muses
Ratings18
Average rating4.1
Four artists are drawn into a web of rivalry and desire at an elite art school and on the streets of New York in this “gripping, provocative, and supremely entertaining” (BuzzFeed) debut “Captures the ache-inducing quality of art and desire . . . a deeply relatable and profoundly enjoyable read, one drenched in prismatic color and light.”—Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of With Teeth It’s 2011: America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarefied bubble. Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. Complicating matters is Louisa’s unexpected attraction to her charismatic roommate, Karina Piontek, the preternaturally gifted but mercurial daughter of wealthy art collectors. Gradually, Louisa and Karina are drawn into an intense sensual and artistic relationship, one that forces them to confront their deepest desires and fears. But Karina also can’t shake her fascination with Preston Utley, a senior and anti-capitalist Internet provocateur, who is publicly feuding with visiting professor and political painter Robert Berger—a once-controversial figurehead seeking to regain relevance. When Preston concocts an explosive hoax, the fates of all four artists are upended as each is unexpectedly thrust into the cutthroat New York art world. Now all must struggle to find new identities in art, in society, and among each other. In the process, they must find either their most authentic terms of life—of success, failure, and joy—or risk losing themselves altogether. With a canny, critical eye, Sirens & Muses overturns notions of class, money, art, youth, and a generation’s fight to own their future.
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Art. Emotion. Academia. Longing. My GOODNESS what a beautiful debut. Angress, you have successfully caught me in your story-telling world. Just beautiful.
Grateful that Angress's writing style is so effectively evocative–the book tackles visual art in a written medium and somehow I have clear mental images of all the characters' different art styles. Also awesome that the author studied at the U of M, which I found out after I checked it out from the library!
I really enjoyed reading this!
3.5
It is definitely a character-focused character, and I can't even say I particularly loved the characters.
But I loved being in the art world. I loved being in a world in which these characters did not know what the next step was and were not certain that there was even a next step to take. I liked the commentary regarding the hypocrisies of the art world and even the commentary of the shallowness of anti-capitalistic protest in a discipline in which success is based on value, sales, etc.
For the most part, I just could not stop reading about these characters. All are stuck. Some are haunted.
Do I think each of the characters had the development necessary to flesh out their character in the way the author seemed to gesture to? Not really. Karina's sexual harassment storyline was...there just to be there. Preston's crisis regarding his similarities with his father...was fairly shallow. I appreciated the idea of a cycle of abuse, but it was just mentioned very superficially, and I think there could have been more done to show how much of a crisis this was for Preston to realize he had potentially become the man he hated most.
Robert was there. I can understand the point of having someone spit out by the art world in the novel, and I even enjoyed a lot of Robert's scenes. Louisa was also there, and I enjoyed reading about her struggle to reconcile her love of art with her dislike of the art world and the shallowness that pervades this “deep,” high-brow sphere of life.
I wish I could say this book forced me to question what beauty was. I wish this book was a little more atmospheric as well, and I would've enjoyed more luscious descriptions of paintings. I can't. I can't even say this is objectively amazing. But I really enjoyed seeing how everything played out, and it was the first book in a while that I just felt so much joy reading, even if I now see a lot of flaws.
