Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife

A fascinating glimpse into the life of an eccentric, legendary photographer whose work came to prominence only after her death.

Pamela Bannos, a professor at Northwestern University, frames a fascinating portrait of Vivian Maier, the mysterious nanny who was also a gifted, self-taught photographer who chose to remain unknown. The biography also examines the astonishing circumstances and coincidences by which Maier's photographs emerged into the public eye and her meteoric posthumous rise in the art world. Bannos pieces together clues about the woman behind the camera, dispelling myths that have been perpetuated and shaped since her death in 2009.

Vivian Maier was--and continues to remain--an enigma. Eccentric, fiercely independent and intensely private, she was born illegitimately in Manhattan to a French mother, whose own birth was illegitimate. Both Maier's mother and grandmother were live-in servants. That paved the way for Vivian, throughout her adult life, to work as a nanny for several well-to-do U.S. families. This enabled her to support herself while also secretly pursuing her craft as a visual artist for decades. Those closest to her knew that Maier liked to take photographs, yet no one knew the extent of her passion and drive--and the scope of her talent. It was only near the end of Maier's life that her work was discovered: photographs, thousands of negatives and more than 1,000 rolls of undeveloped film.

Bannos's engrossing, meticulously researched biography sensitively reconstructs Vivian Maier's very private life in conjunction with her posthumous legacy as a visionary photographer. Many questions remain and always will. However, Bannos's comprehensive narrative ensures that Vivian Maier's story and the treasure trove of her work will live on. 

Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife  by Pamela Bannos

University of Chicago Press, $35.00 Hardcover,  9780226470757, 352  pages

Publication Date: October 10, 2017

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (November 3, 2017), link HERE

Grief Cottage

An orphaned 11 year-old works through his grief when he goes to live with his great-aunt on a remote South Carolina island.

Marcus Harshaw looks back on his life as an 11 year-old who faced the tragic, sudden death of his single mother and then went to live with his great-aunt Charlotte on a remote South Carolina island. The story is predominantly set during Marcus's first summer on the island when Aunt Charlotte--a thrice married and divorced, set-in-her-ways, reclusive artist--took in precocious, self-contained Marcus and provided him a safe haven. Marcus's formative years with his mother--and their chronic struggles to make ends meet--made Marcus philosophically wise beyond his years, enabling him to adapt and be sensitive toward his aunt's brooding, hermetic life. Charlotte gained notoriety painting images of a deserted, dilapidated local house nicknamed, Grief Cottage, where the family who occupied the residence disappeared during Hurricane Hazel in 1954. The battered, run-down cottage becomes a source of intrigue for Marcus, as well, as he seeks to learn more about the shack's history and the people who perished there. This quest unearths questions about Marcus's own background, namely coming to grips with his relationship with his mother, how he lost his best friend from school and identifying his unknown, absent father.

Godwin (Publishing: A Writer's Memoir) has written an exquisitely rendered narrative that emotionally deepens with metaphorical subplots that include the preservation of nested Loggerhead turtle eggs and the presence of a ghost at Grief Cottage. This grace-filled story probes aspects of life and death, isolation and family, and how great pain and loss can ultimately lead to unforeseen transcendence. 

Grief Cottage: A Novel by Gail Godwin

Bloomsbury USA, $27.00 Hardcover, 9781632867049

Publication Date: June 6, 2017

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE


NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 11, 2017), link HERE

We Could Be Beautiful

A wealthy single woman falls hard for a handsome, charismatic and attentive older man who may--or may not--be harboring secrets.

Swan Huntley intimately explores the psyche of a 43-year-old, still single, affluent New Yorker in her first novel, We Could Be Beautiful. Despite her success as the owner of an upscale handmade stationery shop, Catherine West feels terribly incomplete, like a failure, until she meets handsome and striking William Stockton, a widower and independently wealthy investment banker in his 50s, at an art gallery opening. "There was something familiar about him," Catherine says of their first encounter. They learn they share a love of fine art and a history--they come from the same privileged societal class, and their parents had been friends years earlier.

When Catherine tells her mother, Elizabeth, about William, and inquires as to what she might remember about him and his family, her mother's curt, agitated response is jarring. Catherine blames her reaction on her Alzheimer's, and William later admits that Elizabeth might be remembering that, as a boy, he was once a guest in their home and broke an expensive vase. The explanation seems plausible as William and Catherine move in together and begin planning their wedding. However, their blissful romance is marred once Catherine discovers an old diary her mother kept and a letter from a former nanny, which may shed light into Elizabeth's troubled reaction to William.

Deception and greed are suspenseful undercurrents that propel this well-plotted, seductive psychological thriller. Huntley has created a riveting heroine in whom readers will eagerly invest as she is forced to unravel the truth about a man who seems too good to be true and a shrouded past that may hold the key to her future. 

We Could Be Beautiful by Swan Huntley
Doubleday, $25.95 Hardcover, 9780385540599, 352 pp
Publication Date: June 28, 2016
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/24/16), link HERE