A Fine Imitation

Set between 1910 and 1920 A Fine Imitation explores the story of society girl Vera and how she navigated her life through the wealthy but soon learns that the lifestyle is not as free as she had hoped. Vera is longing to go to college and study art history; society quickly puts her in her place with restrictions opposed to a woman of the time. Unhappy to know the regulations put on her, she must learn to want more and fight for it. Amber Brock as created a fascinating read looking at the struggles women went through during the decade that became define at the women's right movement. ( )

A FINE IMITATION BY AMBER BROCK is set in alternating years of 1913 at Vassar and 1923 in New York & follows Vera a girl/& woman of beauty & pedigree. Student of art at Vassar just filling in her time until marriage to a wealthy man , in 1923 married & living at the Angelus a very coveted address on Park Ave. Vera at Vassar is just going thru the motions of college. She knows what her life of the future holds. Vera in Park Ave is also just going thru the motions, her husband is all work & no time for Vera. Then one day Vera meets Emil, an artist paid to live at the Angelus and create a mural in their swimming pool area.

Page after page I turned. Chapter after chapter as the story gets deeper you keep wanting to know what the secret of Vassar is and what Vera will do once she realizes she's in love with another man. I could not put it down until I finished. And at the end I even agreed with Vera about what she did & why she did it.
I recieved this book free from Librarything in exchange for an honest review ( )

Vera Bellington is an extremely wealthy society wife in New York City with an unsatisfying marriage. Her husband is always gone on business, leaving her with little to do, apart from lunches with her mother, directing the staff when to bring her a drink, and society work. When her building hires an artist to paint a mural in the natatorium, Vera is slowly drawn toward him and the two pair off at an excruciatingly slow pace.

This novel is set in the 1920's and it reads like classic literature. And what I mean is that is that nothing really happens except painfully formal dialogue and overly polite flirting. The characters were shallow and not particularly deep. I just could not get into this book and became bored halfway through. It was hard to feel sorry for Vera given her circumstances, even if the time period would not have permitted her to leave her unfulfilling marriage without a scandal. Those who enjoy classic literature and historically-based novels may like this one. It's not terrible, there just wasn't enough character development or story line to catch my interest. ( )

Summary: Vera Bellington has everything a woman could want: a wealthy and powerful husband, a penthouse apartment in one of the most exclusive buildings in the city, summers in Montauk, a place at the pinnacle of 1920s New York high society. Yet she's dissatisfied: her husband Arthur is rarely home, and aloof and distant when he is; her society friends never seem able to rise above gossip to talk about anything of substance, her mother is constantly on the lookout of any traces of "improper" behavior, and she has no outlet for her love of art and art history. However, all of that starts to change when the tenants of the building hire an artist to paint a mural in the building's pool room. Emil Hallan is young, attractive, talented... and mysterious, charming the building's tenants but deftly dodging any questions about himself or his past. Vera is drawn to him, but how can she trust a man she knows nothing about? And in falling for him, is she being lured towards the same kind of mistake she has made in the past?

Review: I am about a year behind on writing reviews, but rather than work on any of that backlog, I'm reviewing the book I finished last night. Why? Because this is 100% the kind of book which will slide right off my cerebellum, and if I don't get it reviewed now, I will have forgotten everything about it in a week. That's not to say that it's a terrible or unenjoyable read, just that it didn't have anything that really grabbed me, or anything that really made it stand out or stick in the memory.

Essentially, this book is what you'd get if you took The Awakening, took away Chopin's lovely atmospheric prose, moved it from Louisiana to New York, moved it forward in time to the 1920s, added in the mother-daughter relationship from Titanic, and a sub-plot about a scandal and a broken friendship from the main character's college days. (As a side note, why is the man who tempts the stifled rich woman to adultery and rule-breaking and becoming her true self always an artist? It's true here, it's true in The Awakening, and even Jack had his drawings of French girls.) But the upshot is, I felt like I'd read this story before, and I don't know that this iteration had much that was new to say.

Brock does draw her characters well - I felt like I knew them all fairly well by the end of the novel (although perhaps that's because none of them stray too far from the archetypes for this type of story.) However, I had a really hard time getting involved in their story. I know it's part of the point, but Vera is SO passive and so capitulating to her mother and her husband and to society's expectations that it's hard to really root for her, and when she finally does stop being quite so passive towards the end of the book, it seems pretty abrupt. There's also an issue of how much we're supposed to be pitying the poor little rich girl that I didn't quite buy into. There is the barest lip service given to the fact that Vera, even given her loveless marriage, has it immensely good compared to almost everyone else in the world, but that's quickly dismissed by Emil saying that she's "living the tragedy she knows." Which, yes, fine, everyone has their own struggles and their own unhappinesses, but it was hard for me to get *too* bent out of shape over the fact that Vera found her life - the life that she had ultimately chosen to live - to be unsatisfying. The one character I liked the most, and thought had the most interesting story, was Bea, Vera's college friend with whom she'd fallen out (although we don't learn the reasons for why until the end of the book). I think a book from Bea's perspective would have been much more lively and much more interesting. Emil's backstory, on the other hand, is also revealed late in the book, but after such a big deal is made out of the fact that he won't tell any of it to any one, when it finally does come out, it didn't quite have the punch to be satisfying after all that build-up, even though it was at least keeping in character.

Ultimately, this book was an easy read, and didn't have anything particularly bad or problematic about it, but neither did it have anything particularly wonderful or new. The Jazz Age setting might attract some people to this novel, but it wasn't really a focus; apart from one visit to the novelty of the cinema and one visit to a speakeasy, and a few mentions about the Bellingtons having to get their alcohol from Canada, this novel could easily have been set in modern times. I was hoping there would be more of an emphasis on art and art history and forgery hinted at in the title, and while elements of these do come into play, they're not really the focus. I enjoyed it enough to finish it, but it didn't have enough substance that I'm ever likely to want to revisit it. 3 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: This book would be fine for a beach or a plane or other light reading that's a little more refined than your typical chick-lit, but honestly? I'd suggest picking up The Awakening instead. ( )

One of the first things that captured my attention for A Fine Imitation is the cover. Whoever said you can’t judge a book by its cover was only half-wrong. The cover model invokes the novel’s main protagonist, Vera Longacre Bellington: glamorous, chic, period, and lonely.
Deep down, Vera has always been lonely. During her college years at Vassar College in 1913 and ten years later when she lives in New York City. I had the feeling that even as a child, an only child at that, that she was lonely. The novel alternates between 1913 and 1923.
Vera loves art and is studying it at Vassar. She befriends Bea Stillman from Atlanta. Bea is everything Vera is not. The two become fast friends as Bea pulls Vera into one adventure aft another. Only when the two get caught on one such adventure, Vera is pulled from the college (with only a semester until graduation) by her very formidable mother. Bea has secrets she is desperately trying to hide. Vera and Bea glimpse each other occasionally, but never speak or acknowledge each other’s prescence.
Fast forward to 1923. Vera lives in the penthouse of the most luxurious apartment building in New York…and one that her husband, Arthur Bellington, built. Vera has everything money can buy: accept love. The couple is close with many of other wealthy couples living in the building.
I’m not sure really how it came to be, but the residents of the building decide they want a mural painted on the tiles in the basement’s Pool Room. A search is conducted, and soon Emil Hallern, a French painter, arrives. As an artist, he has several demands, like not allowing anyone in the room until the painting is complete.
Hallern never talks about himself, which leaves Vera suspicious. The harder she pushes the less he will disclose. Soon, the two are embroiled in a passionate affair, where secrets are revealed, secrets I never saw coming.
Bock’s debut novel, on the surface, reminds me of Melanie Benjamin’s latest title, The Swans of Fifth Avenue. It appears to be almost about nothing…about everyday life among the wealthy, but readers will find themselves knee-deep in human interactions and all that those involve. The title evokes the two parallel stories that run throughout the novel. ( )