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The Museum of Modern Love
Bookseller recommendation
“Fascinating fiction based on the true story of artist Marina Abramović’s 2010 art performance in which she sat face-to-face, eye-to-eye, with museum visitors, one at a time, for 75 days. She sat unmoving, in the same pose every day, her expression unchanged except for occasional tears. The performance had surprisingly deep effects on both visitors who sat with her and visitors who simply observed. The story focuses on several fictional characters’ almost-obsessive attraction to the performance and its subsequent influence on their lives. Not unlike the apparent enchantment of the performance, it was hard to tear my eyes from the page.”
Kay Wosewick,
Boswell Book Company
Our hero, Arky Levin, has reached a creative dead end. An unexpected separation from his wife was meant to leave him with the space he needs to work composing film scores, but it has provided none of the peace of mind he needs to create. Guilty and restless, it is almost by chance that he stumbles upon an art exhibit that will change his life.
Based on a real piece of performance art that took place in 2010, the installation that the fictional Arky Levin discovers is inexplicably powerful. Visitors to the Museum of Modern Art sit across a table from the performance artist Marina Abramović, for as short or long a period of time as they choose. Although some go in skeptical, almost all leave moved. And the participants are not the only ones to find themselves changed by this unusual experience: Arky finds himself returning daily. As the performance unfolds over the course of seventy-five days, so too does Arky. Connecting with other people drawn to the exhibit, he slowly starts to understand what might be missing in his life and what he must do.
This is a book about art, but it is also about success and failure, illness, death, and happiness. It’s about what it means to find connection in a modern world. And most of all, it is about love, with its limitations and its transcendence.
Heather Rose was born in Australia in 1964. Her novels have been short-listed or have won awards for literary fiction, crime fiction, and children’s fantasy. In 2017, The Museum of Modern Love, her seventh novel, won the Christina Stead Prize and the Stella Prize. It is her first novel for adults to be published in the United States. She lives by the sea on the island of Tasmania.
Laurel Lefkow is an accomplished radio actress and winner of several AudioFile Earphones Awards for audiobook narration. Her many theater credits include Look Back in Anger, Little Foxes, The Heiress, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Boy Next Door. On television she can be seen in A Class Act, Small Metal Jacket, and The Perfect Family.
Audiobook details
Reviews
“Audacious and beautiful.”
“A part-fact, part-fiction tale of art, love, grief, and convergence.”
“From its conception to its last page, this book challenges our perceptions of where life ends and art begins.”
“Displays a deep appreciation of art and a deft ability to blend fact, fiction, abstract ideas, and sentiment…Rose clearly believes in the redemptive, transformative power of art for artist and audience, writer and reader.”
“Deeply involving…profound…emotionally rich and thought-provoking.”
“A lush tone poem to the life of art and art in life, The Museum of Modern Love coruscates with captivating energy.”
“This captivating work explores the meaning of art in our lives and the ways in which it deepens our understanding of ourselves…Rose also combines intriguing characters with a laser-sharp focus on art to produce a gem of a novel.”
“Clever, genre-bending…Rose’s melancholy book resonates with emotion, touching on life’s great dilemmas—death, vocation, love, art.”
“This quiet novel about love, death, and art is without flourishes in audio format and packs a greater emotional punch…Lefko pulls the listener into this character-driven book. It feels more leisurely paced than it is. Kudos to Lefkow for an absorbing auditory experience.”
“Framing a love story around a long-durational performance work, where the passage of time is essential, is a profoundly original idea. I love this book.”
“One of my stand-out Australian reads…It is a glorious novel, meditative and special in a way that defies easy articulation.”
“A weirdly beautiful book.”
“The Museum of Modern Love is an unusual and remarkable achievement, a meditation on the social, spiritual, and artistic importance of seeing and being seen. It is rare to encounter a novel with such powerful characterization, such a deep understanding of the consequences of personal and national history, and such dazzling and subtle explorations of the importance of art in everyday life.”
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