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A sweeping novel about friendship, love, and the lifelong pursuit of art from Dave Eggers, the award-winning, bestselling author of The Circle, Hologram for the King, and The Eyes & the Impossible.
Cricket Dib, born on the American prairie, has no particular prospects or ambitions until, in grade school, he realizes he can draw. He soon meets a girl, Olympia Argyros, one year older, who is captivating and brilliant and far more worldly. Recognizing his talent, she convinces him to deface, with profound vulgarity, a popular playground. Under her direction, he does it willingly, already in love, and thus begins a sixty-five-year entwining between Cricket and Olympia, encompassing friendship, working partnership and love affair. Together they go to art school—an experience of dubious value—and then navigate the art world for the next fifty years, together and apart.
Contrapposto is a moving and very funny novel about allies and art, and what it means to be an artist. All through their lives, Cricket sees Olympia as his soulmate and destiny, and while she is always his champion, romantically her eyes are always seeking something—and someone—else. Their love changes over the decades, but their commitment to each other, and their search for meaning in the making of art, never wanes. The novel spans the globe, from New York to Cambodia, Indiana to Paris, and follows Cricket and Olympia through sickness and health, war and death.
The novel is a wild and beautiful examination of the rules and market forces of the art world, but chiefly it's about two friends who believe they can change that world, and bring new meaning to it, if only they can start their own movement, dodge charlatans, remain open-eyed and open-hearted, avoid going mad, avoid dying young of rare cancers, stay true to their ideals, and never tire of beauty. Not easy, but not impossible, either.
"Surpassingly beautiful and enthralling...[Eggers] ingeniously meshes the arresting and affecting drama of Cricket and Olympia with an insightful, caustically funny, at times tragic, and truly profound inquiry into the making and meaning of art...Gloriously brought to fruition." —Booklist (starred review)
"[A] tour de force." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A winningly detailed art-world story." —Kirkus Reviews\
"A tender, searching novel for readers still devastated by Sally Rooney's Normal People." —Library Journal
"Glorious and captivating, with Eggers' signature humor and precision, Contrapposto tells a big and big-hearted story that counter-positions exquisitely the pain and exhilarations of love and the creative impulse. I loved this novel." —Lily King, author of Heart the Lover
"This is a portrait of an artist as a young man, but then on through life, to the end, told by one of our finest artists. With Contrapposto, Dave Eggers gives us, generously and precisely, clear and bright, a story about why we create, and how we love." —Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars
This information about Contrapposto was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: © Michelle Quint
Dave Eggers is the author of The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, A Hologram for the King, What Is the What, and The Museum of Rain, among other books. He is the cofounder of 826 National, a network of youth writing centers, and Art + Water, a nonprofit visual art hub on San Francisco's waterfront. A classically trained artist and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Eggers has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and is the recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the American Book Award. In 2024, The Eyes and the Impossible was awarded the Newbery Medal.
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