Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal - Translated by Jessica Moore - #TuesdayTeaser

Hello and welcome to this weeks Tuesday Teaser. The place where we take a sneaky peek at the beginning of a book.

This weeks book is Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal and is translated from French by Jessica Moore.

Maylis de Kerangal is the author of several books in French, including Naissance d’un pont, (published in English as Birth of a Bridge), which won of the Prix Franz Hessel and Prix Médicis in 2010; Réparer les vivants, which won the Grand Prix RTL-Lire and the Student Choice Novel of the Year from France Culture and Télérama and whose English translation, The Heart, was one of the Wall Street Journal’s Ten Best Fiction Works of 2016 and the winner of the 2017 Wellcome Book Prize; and Un chemin de tables, whose English translation, The Cook, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. She lives in Paris.

The Blurb

Behind the ornate doors of 30, rue du Métal in Brussels, twenty students begin their apprenticeship in the art of decorative painting - that art of tricksters and counterfeiters, where each knot in a plank of wood hides a secret and every vein in a slab of marble tells a story.

Among these students are Kate, Jonas and Paula Karst. Together, during a relentless year of study, they will learn the techniques of reproducing materials in paint, and the intensity of their experience - the long hours in the studio, the late nights, the conversations, arguments, parties, romances - will cement a friendship that lasts long after their formal studies end.

For Paula, her initiation into the art of trompe l'œil will take her back through time, from her own childhood memories, to the ancient formations of the materials whose depiction she strives to master. And from the institute in Brussels where her studies begin, to her work on the film sets of Cinecittà, and finally the prehistoric caves of Lascaux, her experiences will transcend art, gradually revealing something of her own inner world, and the secret, unreachable desires of her heart.

A coming-of-age novel like no other: an atmospheric and highly aesthetic portrayal of love, art and craftsmanship from the acclaimed author of Birth of a Bridge and Mend the Living.

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Page 1

Paula Karst appears in the stairwell, she's going out tonight, you can tell straight away, a perceptible change in speed from the moment she closed the apartment door, her breath quicker, heartbeat stronger, long dark coat open over a white shirt, boots with three-inch heels, and no bag, everything in her pockets - phone, cigarettes, cash, all of it, the set of keys that keeps the beat as she walks (quiver of a snare) - and her hair bouncing on her shoulders, the staircase that spirals around her as she hurries down the flights, swirls all the way to the lobby, where, intercepted at the last second by the huge mirror, she pulls up short, leans in to fathom her walleyed irises, smudges the too-thick eyeshadow with a forefinger, pinches her pale cheeks, and presses her lips together to flood them with red (indifferent to the hidden flirtatiousness in her face, the divergent strabismus, subtle, but always more pronounced when evening falls). Before stepping out into the street she undoes another shirt button - no scarf even though it's January outside, winter, la bise noire, but she wants to show her skin, wants the breath of night wind against the base of her throat.

ISBN: 978 0857059864

Publisher: MacLehose Press

So what do you think? Are you feeling tempted to read this book?

(author bio info courtesy of Macmillan)