Piambo is a successful painter of New York society portraits. Feeling that he is not living up to his artistic potential, he impetuously accepts a mysterious commission from a blind man who accosts him on his way home one night. As learns the next day, he will be paid an unprecendented sum to paint Mrs. Charbuque. The catch? He cannot see her. The lady sits behind a screen and tells him a bizarre tale of her isolated childhood as the daughter and assistant of a man who believed he could learn th...

A clever premise -- a bored and unhappy portrait painter is hired by the mysterious Mrs. Charbuque to paint her portrait, with one catch; he can't ever see her. From behind a screen she will answer any question, but no peeking. If he manages to capture her image, he will win enough money to free him from the necessity of portraiture and allow him to be an artist again -- masterfully written. The truly clever part of this is that we as readers are in the same position as the painter--we only know...

An engaging, poised novel that makes a great use of its central premise: a painter is hired to paint a portrait of a woman, except he isn't allowed to look at her. Instead, she tells him the story of her life--which is fantastic, bordering on the cosmological, and seems to be creeping into the world around the painter in ominous ways. Along the way, just like in Ford's stories, there are moments of imagination (delivered in this impressionistic, almost liquid smooth prose) that impressed me more...

Very intriguing mystery with unexpected twists. As an amateur artist I love to read about artist characters and this book has some very good notions about the creative process.

I loved Ford's book 'The Shadow Year.' I really liked his collection of short stories entitled 'Crackpot Palace.' The premise of this story (a painter commissioned to do a portrait of a woman who refuses to allow him to see her) sounded intriguing. Unfortunately, I thought this became "much ado about nothing." Although well written, the story felt like a lot of filler slowly leading up to a climax that just didn't do it for me. Nonetheless, Ford is a great writer with excellent ideas and I will

starts out like a henry james story and then explodes into surrealist fantasy. 300 pages long and i smiled the whole way through. my only quibble is i think it may have overshot the ending by a bit, in the name of bringing us back to the "real world." i can't imagine why no one has made this into a movie. it's just sitting right there, wrapped up in a bow.

Jeffrey Ford's novel The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque was a really good read. I debated between 4 and 5 stars, and settled on 4 because the end was a little bit of a let down. If you are reading this, you probably know the plot of The Portrait. Ford keeps up the mystery throughout the novel, and never lets the reader get tired with the mystery. All the characters, despite their odd quirkiness, are completely engaging and interesting to follow. Ford's history of New York City in the 19th century is...

A haunting story and psychological thriller. A portrait artist in early 20th century New York gets the offer for a commission of a lifetime: paint a woman's portrait without being able to see her and receive enough payment to be able to stop painting portraits and focus on work he is passionate about. He can only ask her questions about her life. The artist is quickly pulled into this warped tale of Mrs. Charbuque's life - never knowing what is real and what is pure childhood fantasy. There is a...

This is an Uncorrected Proof of the hardcover.Through this narrative of events, Jeffrey Ford weaves a wonderful thread of mythic and classical allusion, playing and mirroring metaphor, while constructing a mystery in which both the characters and the reader are warned of red herrings. A tale perhaps of redemption, or alternately a delve into the nature of identity or gender, a celebration of wonder that may parody religion while more obviously contemplating the act of creation, the author is too...

This novel got inside of my skin -- I haven't figured out why yet, but it did, and I'm sure I'll be thinking about it for a long time to come. It is the second of Jeffrey Ford's books that I've read (the first being The Girl in the Glass) and he does not disappoint. His writing is excellent, and there is no better way to describe his work. If you want something WAY off the beaten path, and certainly off the path of what's on the bookshelves at your local bookstore, then try this one.here's the b...

I loved the story idea from the beginning: A mysterious woman approaches an artist offering a commission to paint her portrait, the one qualification being he cannot lay eyes upon her. She will sit behind a screen answering his questions, and he is to draw her portrait from any insights he gains listening to her answers. If interpretation is the heart and soul or art, then how can any artist serious about his profession pass up such a challenge? He can't. Neither can our protagonist, Piero Piamb...

This book contains, in all seriousness, the sentence, "I was withering inside like those cut flowers ensconced in the ornate vase that was my life." Needless to say, I gave up before page fifty. (Alas for the premise. If only the /good/ writers got the good ideas! If only Jesus Christ had Rothschild's purse!)

When I picked up this book, I was expecting something along the lines of The Portrait of Dorian Gray. There are a few similarities; in fact the Portrait of Dorian Gray is mentioned at the beginning of the book. Both of them lift questions they don’t really answer but that’s about as far as the similarities go. This book is actually quite hard to define and classify… it’s fiction and fantasy and mystery all at once… and then when you look back on it, there’s no real supernatural explanation…What

This is a delightful read. It’s a post modern mystery veiled as historical fiction. It stays light and breezy despite having a darker edge. It has a similar vibe to Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum with a guy wandering around a city trying to find clues to a person’s history while being threatened by some vague danger. It doesn’t have Eco’s deeper exploration of history, but it does explore New York City in the Reconstruction pretty well.The book bounces back and forth between the Shéhérazade-like stor...

I miss this book already. It was a true joy to immerse into this bizarre tale at the end of every day. For me, this was a story to be savored, sipping only a few chapters at a time. And yet, all too soon it came to an end. Like all of Ford's stories, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque features startling imagination and skillful writing. Seriously, Ford could take the directions for cooking orzo pasta and somehow find a captivating, beautiful, and original way to tell it. The man is a treasure, and t...

The idea of drawing an unseen person portrait by means of hearing her life story was very exciting to me but I believe the choice of a first-person narrator for this story was wrong because Piambo-the painter who had to paint Mrs. Charbuque's portrait- was not an attractive character . He was cruel to his master, his friend and her lover and he seemed to be so self absorbed. I cannot believe him boasting about his talent in painting, I have to accept it because the author makes me to. I don't se...

I've said it before and I'll gladly say it again: Jeffrey Ford is one of the best writers alive today. This book is impossible to put down -- indeed, I read it in one sitting -- and full of the color and imagination one comes to expect from Ford.I have to admit, I was disappointed with the end, which was a lot more sedate and pedestrian than what I was hoping for. The ending does bring a certain amount of peace to some characters who deserve it, but I was really hoping for -- and expecting -- a

I can't decide what I think about this book... it's an unusual mixture of mythology, historical fiction, mystery, and horror, with a hint of magical realism thrown in. It's weird and dark but, like the narrator, I was drawn into the puzzle of the elusive Mrs. Charbuque. I'm on the fence between 3 and 4 stars, going with 4 because I like the fact that it's off the beaten path.

quite a challenge for the painter, but also for the reader, as to explain his feelings about this intriguing and challenging story. The ending left me speechless !A must read

the publisher hints "a bit of Henry James and Raymond Chandler... maybe a bit of a noir-ghost-detective-mystery vibe... the writing is pure Jeffrey Ford though, even as he moves dibs and dabs at various styles of narration... the story is a beauty though, laden with unknowns and casually strewn facts and anecdotes about 'the woman he cannot see'... and who is killing all these people and does it have anything to do with the painting? Ford seeds the tale with eerie and ethereal enigmas and allows...