A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“What she wants most - what she truly yearns for - is what any of us want: to be seen.”- A Piece of the World, Christina Baker Kline

"Later he told me that he’d been afraid to show me the painting. He thought I wouldn’t like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid moonscape of wheatgrass and timothy. That dilapidated house in the distance, looming up like a secret that won’t stay hidden." 

To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than twenty years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the twentieth century.

As she did in her beloved smash bestseller Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline interweaves fact and fiction in a powerful novel that illuminates a little-known part of America’s history. Bringing into focus the flesh-and-blood woman behind the portrait, she vividly imagines the life of a woman with a complicated relationship to her family and her past, and a special bond with one of our greatest modern artists.

Told in evocative and lucid prose, A Piece of the World is a story about the burdens and blessings of family history, and how artist and muse can come together to forge a new and timeless legacy.

Living close to New York City, I've been to the Museum of Modern Art more times than I can count, often with my sister. While she's always been more interested in the contemporary exhibits, I prefer the older art on the top floors. And I always make a stop by Christina's World, even though it's admittedly to visit Hopper's House by the Railroad which is right next to it since he's my favorite painter (if you can't tell by my profile pic). Still, Christina's World holds a special place in my heart because there's just something about it I love. The girl in the middle of the field, staring up at the house and barn, that being her whole world, it kind of makes me ache a little. Wyeth's not one of my favorite painters, but I like the bleak New England scenes he paints. They're very American Gothic, which I love.

A Piece of the World attempts to lend a voice to Christina Olsen, the woman in the painting, which admittedly was not something that appealed to me very much. I've never been that in to books that endeavor to "find the woman behind the famous painting"; it's the same reason why I've never read The Girl With the Pearl Earring. I don't really want to read a fictionalized biography about Madame X or Mona Lisa, because I'm content with coming up with my own ideas as to who they were and, if I'm still curious, I'll read an actual factual source. And yet, I picked up A Piece of the World because it seemed interesting and I wanted some historical fiction, dammit. 

No, I have not read The Orphan Train and I probably never will because I'm sick of WWII historical fiction, dammit, and I know that it will be another The Nightingale knockoff and I don't have the energy for that right now. But I tried not to let that stop me form reading this book.

It's definitely a women's lit historical fiction popularized by the likes of Kristin Hannah, who isn't very interesting to me. Still, Kline has real talent, and I liked a lot of her prose, especially the ending and beginning. The book promises so much, intrigue, the ocean, witches, a book so quintessentially New England it practically smells the the seaside. Which I love, because, hey, New Englander here, and proud of it (except in sports, then I'm New York all the way). Does the book deliver?

Eh, kind of. The beautiful prose isn't really constant throughout the whole book, and I wished that, instead of time jumping, Kline went with a more traditional straightforward narrative. But that's just me, I don't really like that as a narrative device, I rarely even like it when historical fiction novels have a chapter or two that take place in present time.

There's also very little about witches or the sea. Instead, it focuses more on women's issues during the time, like finding a man or the fear of becoming a spinster, things I can't really say appeal to me all that much in historical fiction. Still, it paints a very vivid picture as to who the author thinks Christina was, which basically amounted to a bitter, lonely old spinster who never was allowed to be anything. There are a few obviously author-inserted bits, like her love of Emily Dickinson is clearly because Kline was reading a lot of Emily Dickinson and thought the two things connected quite well, and the half-baked bits about Sadie Hamm or Bacon or whatever her last name is being her friend, as well as Walton and her relationship with her nephew. Too much time was devoted to Walton, not enough in making Christina's other relationships feel real.

The big question is, does this ruin Christina's World for me? I guess not. I don't have a new respect for either the painting or the girl in the painting; I still like the painting just as much as I did prior to reading the book. I don't regret reading A Piece of the World, as I did like the writing and the portrayal of the Maine seaside, even if I did think it could have been better than it was. All in all, this was a solid book. 

7.5 out of 10