By Michael Stein
Permanent Press, $28.00, 206 pages
ISBN 9781579622237

This novel begins at the Connecticut superior courthouse where the thirty-year friendship between artists Simon Pruhar and Harris Montrose has found itself. Pruhar is suing Montrose.

The Rape of the Muse depicted or portrayed the plaintiff as a violent criminal, a portrayal which this plaintiff says is false. It is further claimed that when the defendant offered this computer image to Vanity Fair, he did so deliberately and with calculated intent to subject the plaintiff to hatred, contempt and ridicule, and that act caused him to be defamed.’”

The narrator of the book is Rand Taber, a young artist once deemed by The Times as being one of “25 artists under 25 to watch.” When Taber finds his art stalled, unable to find his muse, he left New York to become an assistant to Montrose in New Haven. A desire to achieve fame drives Taber. Montrose achieved that fame in New York, but gave it up, moving to Connecticut because Pruhar took a teaching job at the art school there.

“The thought of him sitting before a judge made me nervous, although I knew that as a born storyteller he would be a conduit for pure emotion about art for those of us who cared.”

Told from the courtroom to the back-story leading to the court, this novel paints an insightful story of the art world and of the relationships within it.

Reviewed by Angie Mangino