La Tour Dreams of the Wolf Girl

LA TOUR DREAMS OF THE WOLF GIRL is my first exposure to the work of David Huddle - and he's a very talented craftsman. The transitions between present-day Vermont (and Appalachia) and 17th century France are seamless - in the hands of a less competent writer they might easily have been clumsy and disruptive to the narrative. Huddle has a discerning eye when it comes to the human psyche and its accompanying emotional baggage, and he lays out his observations for the reader in several ways - direct, subtly oblique, and various `grey areas' in between the two.We see La Tour through the eyes of a professor of art history at the University of Vermont, Suzanne Nelson. She is writing a dissertation on the artist, and she focuses her attention - and her imagination - on a particular painting, the last one of LaTour's life. He has chosen as his model a village girl, the daughter of the local shoemaker. We see him strut into the village with his retinue of dogs, knowing full well how the scene will play itself out before him. He will make his offer to the shoemaker, who will at first refuse to allow his daughter to pose in the nude for the artist (despite his advanced age and the unlikelihood of anything improper occurring), then the two will haggle over price and social considerations - and in the end, the deal will be made, and the girl will come to his villa to pose for him. LaTour is assured that everything will happen as he imagines it - and to a point, events unfold as he predicts. It is when the girl arrives for her first sitting, and he finds that she is both more intelligent and self-assured than he could have dreamed, that he discovers that he will indeed paint her - his advanced age and his arthritic pains had convinced him that he was merely luring her into his studio to pose for his eyes. When she disrobes for the first time before him, and he sees that she is marked on her back with a thatch of wolf-like hair, stretching from near her shoulder blade to her spine, he is transfixed - and he is further moved to discover that she knows nothing about this unique trait.As Vivienne continues to make visits to LaTour's studio, over the course of a few months, the painting progresses. LaTour saves the addition of the wolf-patch until the last, knowing that as soon as she sees it, she will feel violated and betrayed - both by the artist and her parents. Over the course of this time, she has come to be more comfortable in the artist's presence - he has drawn her out into conversations by posing questions to her about her daily life in the village, and she has been surprised to find herself eager to talk to him. She also is amazed to realize, toward the completion of the painting, that she has been in effect lying to LaTour - that the stories she has told have been embellishments of reality, sometimes complete inventions. He has taught he to lie by giving her to opportunity to do so with impunity.All of this is of course a product of the ima

Gorgeous restraint and clairivoyant insight reside at the center of David Huddle's second (and finest) novel. How he is able to imagine and weave together the lives of an aging art history professor at the end of her marriage and a young girl entangled in a charged mental dance with a dying painter (La Tour) is nothing short of mesmerizing. I read this book in one sitting and sat stunned at the end.

An exquisite balance presides over the large world in this short novel from David Huddle. I'm not sure what that balance is or where it comes from, but I think it grows naturally out of Huddle's profound acceptance of particular human lives exactly as they are. The novel resonates with vulnerability and distinctive intelligence as it moves freely with Suzanne or her husband Jack through vivid episodes in Appalachia, a historical French village, and living rooms and bedrooms of Burlington, Vermont. Huddle's lyrical appreciation of human movement and the subtleties of the most intimate decisions bring surprise to every episode of the novel. The ending is among the most moving in any book I've ever read. I highly recommend this book--to be read the first time in one sitting if possible.

I've been a fan of Huddle's writing since his early short story collections, but this is his best work yet! The novel is eerie and familiar at the same time. Set in present-day Burlington, Vermont (with places those who've been there will definitely recognize), and in the past of 19th century France, the story surrounds the later-years in the life of the strange artist, Georges de la Tour. A professor in VT is writing a paper on La Tour, while at the same time her marriage crumbles. She becomes immersed in a fantasy world, imagining the story behind one of La Tour's paintings- the Wolf Girl. I won't tell any more, because it needs to be a surprise, but I really enjoyed this. A great book for anyone interested in art!