The Age of Light -

Whitney Scharer

Little, Brown and Company

2019

384 páginas

12h 48m

ISBN-10: 0316524085

"Sweeping from the glamour of 1930's Paris through the battlefields of World War II and into the war's long shadow, The Age of Light is a startlingly modern love story and a mesmerizing portrait of a woman's self-transformation from muse into artist."--Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere

She went to Paris to start over, to make art instead of being made into it.

A captivating debut novel by Whitney Scharer, The Age of Light tells the story of Vogue model turned renowned photographer Lee Miller, and her search to forge a new identity as an artist after a life spent as a muse. "I'd rather take a photograph than be one," she declares after she arrives in Paris in 1929, where she soon catches the eye of the famous Surrealist Man Ray. Though he wants to use her only as a model, Lee convinces him to take her on as his assistant and teach her everything he knows. But Man Ray turns out to be an egotistical, charismatic force, and as they work together in the darkroom, their personal and professional lives become intimately entwined, changing the course of Lee's life forever.
Lee's journey takes us from the cabarets of bohemian Paris to the battlefields of war-torn Europe during WWII, from discovering radical new photography techniques to documenting the liberation of the concentration camps as one of the first female war correspondents. Through it all, Lee must grapple with the question of whether it's possible to reconcile romantic desire with artistic ambition-and what she will have to sacrifice to do so.

Told in interweaving timelines, this sensuous, richly detailed novel brings Lee Miller-a brilliant and pioneering artist-out of the shadows of a man's legacy and into the light.

Resenhas (1)

5 (Perfeito)

"The age of Light" is a fiction based on the story of two personalities: Man Ray, a brilliant artist and Lee Miller, a successful model who decides to become a photographer, and turns out to be a woman beyond his time, photographic correspondent of World War II.

The book is divided into two parts and starts at Farley Farm in Sussex, England in 1966. Narrated in the third person, we follow an older Lee, leading a quiet life, which receives Audrey, your boss and your request Unusual: That Lee writes about Man Ray. However, Lee decides he will write about his story and that is where the reader is transported to Paris in 1929.

As the synopsis explains, Lee moves to Paris to learn about photography, since he wants to leave his job as a model to be behind the cameras. The beginning is not easy and we have a solitary narrative, which struggles to get through the days.

At a certain social gathering, Lee is introduced to Man Ray, a famous artist and seen as a visionary at the time and there the young woman tries to convince him to make her his apprentice, but Man Ray offers the assistant vacancy, which Lee accepts readily.

Time goes by and the two are very close, Lee is learning a lot and their relationship changes into an overwhelming romance. However, Lee realizes that even Man Ray adopting his ideas, he does not give her credit and Lee sees himself once again as a puppet in the hands of a man.

We then start Lee's career as a World War II photographic correspondent and are taken to various parts of the world, such as London, Normandy, Leipzig, Dachaw and Munich.

The narrative is spectacular. The author inserts a unique lyricism in her text, mixing the Parisian bohemian life with the personal horrors of the protagonists, as well as the cruelty of war.

"She nods back, feeling what she had expected to feel since she left New York, that she was able to start something good." (page 52)