Blue Nude [Hardcover]

I read BLUE NUDE in one take. I couldn't stop. Then I re-read the last section because I felt as if I had raced too fast to the end. The prose is gorgeous--lyrical, exact. It feels to me more like an extended poem than a novel. I don't mean that the writing is "poetic" but that it has the hallmarks of poetry: concision and compression. I wanted there to be more, but that's not a criticism. I think it's just the right length. I think BLUE NUDE is a harder book than Rosner's first novel, THE SPEED OF LIGHT, but that, too, is not a criticism. I think the pain and loss go deeper here; at times, they seem almost unbearable. But Rosner's beautiful, sure writing holds us, compels us forward to a redemption that seems totally earned. The novel ends with a scene that's breathtaking in its inventiveness and its rightness. I can't get the images out of my mind, and I'm grateful to Rosner for giving them to me, for making me see that there is always a choice beyond despair.

On a day when I needed to rejuvenate myself, I headed up a mountain between San Francisco and rural Marin County, the settings of Elizabeth Rosner's new book Blue Nude. I have my dog and the book in tow and settle into finishing this fine description of two divergent souls who meet on a creative journey. What I found so compelling in finishing this book is that it took me into a creative trance, usually only achieved when intimately involved in my own creative process. As an analytical type, I found myself not studying the writing or the characters, but instead being swept away by the accumulation of their experiences that result in art.

In Ms. Rosner's first book, The Speed of Light, I was captivated by the experience of feeling the second-hand smoke of genocide, seen through the eyes of children of Holocaust survivors. It also gave us a more fresh and raw view of man against man, and the inhumanity that unfortunately is experienced by many peoples throughout the world. Blue Nude continues in this vein and explores characters not just for their own experience, but also the experience that have shaped the people that have shaped them. And Ms. Rosner doles out this information in a way that keeps us curious and expectant, while not feeling that any of it is predicable.

I thoroughly enjoyed both books, not just for the story and the characters, but for the feelings they invoked in me while reading. These books are thought provoking beyond their last pages.

Blue Nude takes us on a passionate, sensual journey as the two main characters of the story are thrust into a powerful and erotic confrontation with the hope and the fear that each represents to the other. They are both driven by the shadows they carry, whether from the collective trauma of World War II and the Holocaust or from the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. This brave book, however, is far more than just another story about the Holocaust. It is a living, haunting mystery set in San Francisco and Point Reyes in the early 21st Century. Rosner's passionate, poetic writing style gives the story its own body and bones, making it a living piece of exceptional literature.

As in her first novel, The Speed of Light, Elizabeth Rosner uses her skill as a poet to create a stylistic delight that brings the reader very deeply into the inner worlds of Danzig, a 58 year old German male painter, and Marev, a young Israeli woman and artist's model. Rosner's writing style is uniquely successful in bringing us deeply into the explicitly sexual dimension of Danzig and Marev's confrontation in the artist's studio. This is new territory for Rosner; for unlike the more adolescent Paula and Julian from The Speed of Light, Danzig and Marev are fully formed sexual adults. Rosner's writing shines as she brings us into the depths of their sexually charged confrontation. For example, here is Danzig lusting after Marev while teaching his class on how to draw her body:

"He is only partly stunned by the intensity of this desire to touch her. It has been a long time since a model pulled at him this way, skin looking as though it's made of light, an infinity of refraction making his eyes ache. A lunar light, the way the full moon appears as if it is the source of such illumination when we know it is only borrowing from something else, measuring the distance from the sun, showing us that miraculous brightness.

He imagines this: cupping her breasts and testing their weight in his hands to be sure they fit when his mind has already predicted it and his palms tell him Yes. To press himself against her, fold themselves together seam to seam, the way certain insects mate into one flying beam.

He imagines them ascending."

And in direct counterpoint we hear Merav's inner dialogue, acknowledging the contradiction of her role as a model embodying female sexuality.

"A twisting torso is more interesting than a plain stance; one leg bent is better than both legs symmetrical. Not that she has to consciously decide these things anymore. Her body knows its repertoire, though it is something different than repetition...Marev knows she isn't just a figure for them to study; she is a character in a setting, an actress, a silent film...

Her modeling was about the body, and yet the true source of her work was what lived inside, inescapable and invisible. Hers was the art of remaining present even as she disappeared. Inhabiting her body and dreaming her way out of it.".

Rosner takes us on a wondrous and sometimes very disturbing journey through the inner workings of these two souls. Each character carries within them a deeply wounding, tragic piece of the seminal horror of our recent history. Can there be any hopeful outcome from the meeting of these two deeply tortured, yet vibrant people?

In portraying so exquisitely and poetically the specifics of this story, Rosner opens before us the most profound and important questions of our era. Can we overcome the traumas of our past, no matter how severe and unimaginable, and still emerge as fully conscious human beings capable of love? Can we own our fears and projections? Can we stop the cycle of passing on these past traumas to others by our actions that so often create a void of compassion and understanding? And in a more global sense, can we stop supporting policies and collective actions that continue the blind cycle of collective traumatization by war, hatred and blind indifference to human suffering?

As a child of Holocaust survivors herself, Rosner is fully qualified to take on this important journey of exploration. Clearly she is a writer who is willing to face these issues directly. I have learned a lot from her explorations and I invite the reader to delve into her work as well. I believe this book will help open your eyes to the hidden pieces of mystery that create the human condition. This is the most you can ask from a great novel, and Blue Nude is certainly in that category.