I don’t know why this wonderful book is not more famous. I loved it. It tells about a woman trying to be an artist, and covers the terrible fear and dread of that activity better than anything I’ve ever read. Apparently there is a name for the coming-of-age novel of an artist, and it is kunstelrroman, and this is considered by some to be the first female one. (How do we feel about that this only happens in 1978?)
The book is written from the perspective of her early 30s, and covers her confidence as she graduates college (she won a college prize!), to the hard road of the next ten years, during which she has to do commercial illustration, and does less and less of her actual art. She has a LOT of casual sex (is this what the 70s was like? Does not seem hygenic), and suffers very much over how she is intentionally wasting her time and distracting herself from the fact that she is failing – not just in the world’s eyes, but in her own. She is interested in the dates of birth of famous artists, so she can calculate their age at the time of their first big success, and give herself hope that it is not too late for her.
Try this: “New York from across the river resumed the manageable proportions of a maquette, a harmless little table model on which I could project my dreams. It had looked like this when I rode the Carey bus into its center nin years ago from Newark. I still felt the old twinge when I looked at it now. I still wanted to leave my mark on it, even though it had left so many marks on me.”
Substitute London for New York, and I hear you Gail Goodwin, god I hear you. I see this author is still alive and was last published in 2020, so I am for sure going to read more.