In The Woman Who Brought Matisse Back from the Dead, award-winning author of Anne Frank Remembered and The Devil's Mistress, Alison Leslie Gold presents the life of nun-cum-artist's model Claude Boule. Inspired by a true story and told in spare, evocative prose, this improbable, color-soaked life arc spans the art of Henri Matisse and Andy Warhol, a convent in 1930s Nice, wartime Lyon, postwar Paris, New York in the dazzling 60s on to millennium's end. The Woman Who Brought Matisse Back from the Dead explores the abstruse relationship between artist and model: Who transfixes whom? The incidental, often travail-filled, life of Claude Boule - impenetrable and inscrutable - serves as a poignant foil for intimate views into the creative processes and behind-the-scenes life of one of the 20th century's most momentous artists. The brash assemblage of The Woman Who Brought Matisse Back from the Dead also encompasses diverse uncelebrated but no less vividly tinctured people whose lives were touched - erotically, devoutly, unscrupulously and in other often unpredictable ways - by the model's.
Author Biography:
Alison Leslie Gold has published fiction including Clairvoyant, The Imagined Life of Lucia Joyce. Jay Parini said about it: "A vividly written book that plays daringly in the no-mans-land between biography and fiction." A reviewer in the New York Times summed up another novel The Devil's Mistress: The Diary of Eva Braun, The Woman Who Lived and Died With Hitler as follows: "It's hard to forget a novel that spreads across the imagination like a mysterious and evil stain." This book was nominated for the National Book Award. Her nonfiction writing on the Holocaust and World War II has received special recognition. Among those who have singled her out as a protector and chronicler of Holocaust experiences is Elie Wiesel, who said of her: "Let us give recognition to Alison Gold. Without her and her talent of persuasion, without her writer's talent, too, this poignant account, vibrating with humanity, would not have been written." Her works include Anne Frank Remembered, The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide Anne Frank, written with and about Miep Gies, who hid Anne Frank and rescued Anne's diary and Memories of Anne Frank: Reflections of a Childhood Friend, written for young people about Hannah "Lies" Goslar, Anne Frank's best friend. Both books are international best sellers translated into more than twenty languages. Neither. Also for young people, A Special Fate, about Chiune Sugihara the little-known Japanese diplomat who saved 6,000 Jews and others during the war. The nonfiction book Fiet's Vase and Other Stories of Survival, Europe 1939-1945, 25 interviews with survivors, is her farewell to that subject matter, and, Love in the Second Act, 25 true stories of those who have found love later in life, is the first book exploring less dispiriting themes. Most recently she was invited to write a short work for the Cahier Series, titled Lost and Found soon followed by the publication of a literary novel The Woman Who Brought Matisse Back from the Dead, and a family story of alcoholic intervention for ages 10-13 co-authored with Darin Elliott - Elephant in the Living Room. Her nonfiction work has received awards ranging from the Best of the Best Award given by the American Library Association, to a Merit of Educational Distinction Award by the ADL, and a Christopher Award affirming the highest values of the human spirit. She divides her time between New York and an island in Greece.
