The Madhouse Nudes

I opened this book and couldn't put it down until I turned the final page. The Madhouse Nudes caught my attention and didn't let go until I finished the last sentence!

This book really got to me. It's not like any other novel I've read. It is written in letters, which I enjoyed. (Reading somebody else's mail is such a thrill!) It has a mystery in it--actually several different kinds of mysteries. And it's got a great romance. The story picks up speed as it goes along, and by the end I was racing ahead. It really got its hooks into me. The characters seemed very real to me. I could SEE what they saw, FEEL what they felt. This book has really made me think about the way women's bodies are exploited in ads and movies that I see. But at the same time the novel is really sexy, in a nice intimate kind of way. And it's been a long time since I've read a novel that takes the church as seriously as this one does. A complex book! And a pleasure

You can't judge a book by its cover, but this book's cover made it jump off the shelf and into my hand. Back home, I read it from beginning to end, only taking time out to feed myself. I loved the letter form. They were like potato chips. I read one letter, then the next, then the next, and couldn't stop. The writer of these letters, John Ordway, a painter of women, is a mystery to himself until the women in his life, including his models, shake him into realization after realization. This is the best book about men and women that I've read in a long time. And since I suffer from an anxiety and panic disorder, like the main character, I found the book strangely comforting. It made me feel less alone with the scariness. There's a crime and a mystery in this book, and I was kept guessing by it. But finally the deepest mysteries in this wonderful book are not about "who dunnit" but about what it's like to be a human being and try to know another human being with the kind of depth we usually don't