Kunstlers in Paradise by Cathleen Schine

 Monday, Dec. 25, 2023--San Antonio

Kunstlers in Paradise by Cathline Schine has some intriguing elements, but it wasn't a novel that grabbed me and kept me interested in the story throughout.  Julian, a 21-year-old with no motivation to become an adult was not a character to admire in any way.  And by the end of the novel, after his parents had quit supporting him in New York and he had spent a year living with his grandmother in Los Angeles, he was still a dreamer with no solid plans; he had just shifted to a new location and was happy he could continue living for free in his grandmother's guest cottage as he figured out what to do with his life.  He announced a new "idea" of what he might try as his aim in life with a likelihood he would not be successful.  The grandmother has stories she shares of her early life in Los Angeles as a Jewish refugee from Vienna.  But as one more fantastic story after another gets told the logic of such a life of experiences becomes less and less likely.  The title seems to imply that the book is about lots of artists ("kunstlers" being the plural of the German word for artist), but the book is really about the aimless young man-boy and his grandmother.  Other famous immigrants from Europe who were real people do come and go in the stories of the grandmother, but this is fiction so the stories are not true.  And so much time is spent telling about one of those artists, Arnold Schoenberg, and his introduction of atonal music that I became bored and was wishing the grandmother would move onto other stories of her life.  It seems like a slap-dash of stories barely tied together, all involving famous people but none being true,  and the sum of them not really adding up to much at all.  It was on the NPR list of best books of the year, but I disagree.  I gave the book 2 1/2 stars out of 5 which seems generous.