Beyond the carefully measured prose, even the plot has an elevated feeling, its language cerebrally rewarding and sensually satisfying. Though it sits in a sophisticated subgenre, the novel may be even more elegant than its peers. The settings, the characters and the subject are attractive, and even the book’s cover, right down to the texture of the jacket on the hardcover, is like a work of art. The first thing that leaps out from The Last Painting of Sara De Vos is its thoroughly beautiful prose, lush and descriptive but precise. It’s like the lovechild of Geraldine Brooks’ excellent People of the Book, a fictional imagining of the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah, and Elizabeth Kostova’s intricate, underappreciated The Swan Thieves, which builds a story of passion and madness around a painting. Art thrillers have met commercial and critical successes from Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series to Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon books to Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with the Pearl Earring and Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch.ĭominic Smith’s new novel The Last Painting of Sara De Vos is a story of artistic suspense in the style of Chevalier and Tartt, a beautiful literary tale with a twisting, elegant plot and regal pace. For writers, it allows for the flexing of descriptive muscles and makes a delicious sandbox for historical storytelling. For readers, it provides an elegant, mysterious and helpfully visual springboard for the imagination. Fiction about art is satisfying for readers and writers alike.

The lost painting of sara de vos