Laurie Lico Albanese, of Montclair, paints a lovely picture of Vienna of 1900 and then a terrifying one as anti-Semitism rages through the country in two waves.Martha Hines Kolko
“Stolen Beauty”
By Laurie Lico Albanese
(Atria Books, 306 pp, $26)
“Stolen Beauty” is painfully topical, reminding us in excruciating detail what happens when prejudice wins.
Based on real people and real events, the novel alternates between two women, an aunt and her niece, and two times forever linked. It’s an irresistible story, looking at Gustav Klimt’s famous model forThe Woman in Gold. Various books and movies have examined the times and painting, and Albanese’s storytelling does it justice.
Albanese, of Montclair, did the sort of research where salons from 1908 feel exciting and real rather than fusty and merely historical. We’re taken from the women’s refined worlds of classical music, exquisite gowns and sumptuously appointed homes to the hate-fueled politics that ravaged Austria. Albanese makes us feel the panic that sets in when the unthinkable happens.
As all moments that change lives, Maria remembers everything about a night in 1938; her violet perfume, and how her uncle had to steady himself on the bar in a ballroom as everyone listened to the chancellor’s radio announcement that Hitler was at the border and resistance was futile.
Early on, though, the book felt overwritten where terms like “shrill morning” stopped me. But missteps are followed by excellent descriptions such as this scene which Maria encounters as she scurries toward her parents’ home.
“Near the Belvedere Castle I passed a skinny old rabbi chained to a bench with a crooked sign around his neck that read Filthy Jew. Yeshiva students were on their hands and knees barking like dogs while soldiers yelled, Die Jews! Hitler is coming, and schoolgirls in white knee socks threw rocks at two old men who cowered on a bench.”
This, of course, was just the beginning.
A novel that uses real people and rap events to explore the bond between an aunt and her niece and both to a magnificent painting.
Albanese seamlessly weaves Maria’s plight of a young woman to that of her beloved aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, one of the world’s great beauties and one of Klimt’s muses. Adele, reared to be cultured – though not necessarily over-educated – was an autodidact. Sharp, fierce and thoroughly modern, Adele adored art, literature, Maria and Vienna.
Adele also loved Klimt and was one of his many lovers, but her marriage – befitting those of her time and station – was intended to be a great match for both families’ social standing and wealth.
Too often when books alternate between different characters and different times the result is jarring and tiresome. Though each woman is nuanced enough to support an independent novel, the intertwining makes for a stronger, more compelling story.
Albanese reaches deep into each woman’s psyche. Here, in 1900, Adele, a lifelong admirer and astute critic of fine art, attends the opening of a new museum where Klimt’s work is the centerpiece. As Adele studies Klimt’s mural, Philosophy, she thinks:
“When I was young, I’d search the sky for God’s face or closed my eyes and tried to pray them into my heart, but I’d always failed. When Karl got sick, God didn’t answer my prayers – he’d let Karl (her brother) die, and I’d decided right then that if God existed, he was a phantom in the sky looking past our suffering, never hearing our supplications. Since we didn’t go to synagogue and we certainly didn’t attend church, no one had contradicted my beliefs; no one had even asked.”
Adele and her circle, which includes her niece, did not consider themselves Jews. The Nazis, however, did.
The degradation and horrors both generations suffer are detailed. Men disappear, and women give themselves – because it is all they have – to free their men. Businesses that took lifetimes to develop are seized in minutes. Heirlooms are stolen, and one of those was that magnificent painting.
That portrait, of the proud, gorgeous woman whose wisdom shines from the oils and precious metals used to depict her, once belonged to a family, Adele’s. And though Adele died young, her niece, Maria, lived to be very old.
To do so, Maria had to escape from the Nazis. She and her husband, Fitz, walked with just the clothes on their back. After harrowing incidents, they finally arrive in England and when matters turn awful again, they flee to California.
Maria survives because she’s adaptable and what else can she do? She comes from a world that is no longer and makes a new life in America. But that painting, of her aunt, haunts her.
There’s a reason you can view it in Manhattan’s Neue Galerie. Before you do, though, read this fine novel, giving necessary nuance to gaze at this complicated piece of history.
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