October 02 2026, 21:09
Contrapposto
I bought this in hardback based on a (very) brief promotional piece I saw somewhere online, which is unlike me. I think I was thirsty for a story about an artist from the writer of The Circle, which I loved and found exhausting in equal measure. Contrapposto is a visual arts term for a position of the human body, and the novel is about an artist who specialises in life drawing.
Cricket and Olympia meet as children and, even though they move in and out of each others lives, maintain a lifelong relationship that is a mixture of romantic, platonic, art-collaborative and soulmate. Cricket can draw, and through his life he expands his repertoire into many areas of art, but because he isn’t ambitious, he never finds the sort of success that Olympia imagines for him. Olympia is a marketing genius and ideas person and formidable organiser, and she has a long career working behind the scenes of the art world.
The book is in seven sections interleaved with life drawings. Each section is from a part of Cricket’s life, from being nine years old in a working class family in the Midwestern United States, to modern-day Paris in his seventies. Olympia is both the love of his life and someone he find impossible to be with because of their differing temperaments. Many other people come and go, but the story is really about Cricket’s development as an artist, his relationship with Olympia, and the role of commerce in the art world.
It reads smoothly, and several times I stopped to admire an exquisitely written sequence, but I also almost stopped reading completely at the half way mark because of my frustration at Egger’s tendency to over explain and hammer points home. It becomes more propulsive in the second half and both Cricket and Olympia become softer characters to spend time with. I was particularly glad that he nailed the ending. No mean feat.
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