Resenhas - The Age of Light

Lina DC 20/05/2019

"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)