The Bellini Madonna: Summary and book reviews of The Bellini Madonna by Elizabeth Lowry, plus links to an excerpt from The Bellini Madonna and a biography of Elizabeth Lowry.
The Bellini Madonna A Novel
by Elizabeth Lowry
Hardcover: Apr 2009,
352 pages.
Paperback: May 2010,
384 pages.
Thomas Lynch was once a brilliant young art historian. Now he is a disgraced, middle-aged art historian, overly fond of the bottle and of his fresh young students.
But everything will change now that he’s on the trail of a lost masterpiece, a legendary Madonna by the Italian master Giovanni Bellini. Insinuating himself into the crumbling English manor house where the painting may be concealed, Lynch attempts to gull the eccentric and perversely beautiful women who live there — though he himself seems to be the pawn in this elaborate game. A Victorian diary that draws Robert Browning into the painting’s complicated provenance might provide the key—if only Lynch can manage to beat his hosts in the search.
In the end, it will be Lynch’s own vulnerable heart that betrays the betrayer. Interlaced with complex clues and hidden jokes, The Bellini Madonna reels from the lush English countryside to the sternly lovely hill towns of the Veneto, from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first. It is a spectacularly original debut.
BOOK REVIEWS
BookBrowse
Elizabeth Lowry’s Thomas Joseph Lynch can hold his own among the best fictional characters. In the end we do like Lynch but abhor certain aspects of his character. He may not be trustworthy but he is a hell of a storyteller and Lowry's elegant-on-steroids prose (Oxford English Dictionary editor, indeed) does as much to elevate Lynch to best-fictional-character status as do his actions. Crackpot or not (you decide) we would have Thomas Joseph Lynch over for dinner but likely count the silver afterward. (Reviewed by Donna Chavez). Full Review (1098 words).
Media Reviews
Publishers Weekly
[A] wildly imaginative debut...the bold character work and beautiful prose are reason enough to keep reading.
Kirkus Reviews
An ambitious, accomplished piece of work, part rococo amusement, part darker philosophical judgment.
Booklist - Donna Seaman
This sophisticated, parodic puzzler tells an archly entertaining tale of misdirected ardor.
The Times (UK)
This sparkling first novel is a treat for lovers of elegant mystery and exquisite prose ... A delight.
The Spectator (UK)
This is a curious book: not exactly likeable, but certainly intriguing, and definitely accomplished. It is a debut novel, but doesn’t feel like one at all. It is smart, bold and surprising, with nothing of the crowd-pleaser about it; in fact it might irritate, or disgust, just as easily as it amuses.
The Guardian (UK)
A mystery story, a love story and a comedy of errors set in that most familiar of locations - a ruinous country house ... a compelling debut that entertains and unsettles in equal measure.
The Times Literary Supplement (UK)
Fusing the techniques of the thriller writer with those of historical fiction, Lowry . . . invokes an authentically Bellinian sense of distantly exact perspectives to create a first novel of genuine subtlety and distinction.
The Independent (UK)
A complex narrative twists and turns back in time to Baedeker’s Italy ... This is a first novel and Lowry has thrown a very considerable talent into it ... Splendidly quirky.
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(1098 words).
The Times (UK)
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