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    Optic Nerve
    Optic Nerve
    Optic Nerve
    Audiobook5 hours

    Optic Nerve

    Written by Maria Gainza

    Narrated by Kyla Garcia

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The narrator of Optic Nerve is an Argentinian woman whose obsession is art. The story of her life is the story of the paintings, and painters, who matter to her. Her intimate, digressive voice guides us through a gallery of moments that have touched her.

    In Optic Nerve, El Greco visits the Sistine Chapel and is appalled by Michelangelo's bodies. The mystery of Rothko's refusal to finish murals for the Seagram Building in New York is blended with the story of a hospital in which a prostitute walks the halls while the narrator's husband receives chemotherapy. Alfred de Dreux visits Gericault's workshop; Gustave Courbet's devilish seascapes incite viewers "to have sex, or to eat an apple"; Picasso organizes a cruel banquet in Rousseau's honor . . . All of these fascinating episodes in art history interact with the narrator's life in Buenos Aires-her family and work; her loves and losses; her infatuations and disappointments. The effect is of a character refracted by environment, composed by the canvases she studies.

    Seductive and capricious, Optic Nerve marks the English-language debut of a major Argentinian writer. It is a book that captures, like no other, the mysterious connections between a work of art and the person who perceives it.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    TranslatorThomas Bunstead
    Release dateApr 9, 2019
    ISBN9781684572854
    Optic Nerve

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    Reviews for Optic Nerve

    3.5/5

    75 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This was neat, just sparklingly different from anything else I've read in a while. It's at least somewhat autofiction—the narrator, also named María, is an art critic in Buenos Aires, as is the author, and she's said in interviews that there are some overlaps with her life, but only some. Whatever the case, the book is a really well done set of very loosely linked chapters that take off from the idea of how looking at art, and thinking about it, intertwines with a person's life (and often changes it). She's a very good art critic to begin with, so her thoughts on the artists who are part of her stories—from Rothko and El Greco through more obscure and local painters—are really interesting, but also very accessible. There's also a very sub-subtext that caught my eye as a writer and researcher, which is where and how do you get to depart from the record and start building your own story? She's obviously researched these artists very closely, but there are also wonderful textural details about their lives that she could have totally woven in herself. Or not—I was toggling back and forth in Wikipedia and WikiArt to look at the pictures and artists Gainza was talking about, but at a certain point I (and probably most readers) will just sit back and take the narrative on faith, so those authorial nuances are always fascinating to me. Anyway, if you like looking at art and thinking about it past the moment when you're standing in front of the canvas, this is a lot of fun. Very fresh, I thought. And the translation, by Thomas Bunstead, is excellent.
    • 3/5
      Before I became pregnant I could be very persuasive, I'd do anything (anything) to get my way, but lately all of my husband's replies had been starting with the word "no."This novel, largely set in Buenos Aires, centers on a woman's life, through the paintings that she loves. Each chapter recounts one aspect of her life; an event, a friend, a character trait, interwoven with her encounter with a piece of art and some details of the artist's life. . . . Santiago had given me an autobiography to read, and he was planning on bringing it out to coincide with a retrospective of his work. Unaccountably curious, I read it in a single sitting, skipping over the boring parts, until I realized in fact it was all boring parts, one leaden sentence after another.The narrator's voice is engaging, I liked her right from the beginning. And what she chose to illuminate from each painter's life was fascinating. This novel reminded me of [[Rachel Cusk]]'s [Outline] trilogy, although this book has a more detached, cool feel to it, and decidedly less plot. I read with a laptop next to me, as all but a few of the paintings were unfamiliar to me and it was an enjoyable way to learn a little about South American artists. The observations and thoughts of the unnamed protagonist were insightful, although the lack of any plot or greater understanding of her life did leave me feeling that this book is a unmoored from any solid foundation.
    • 4/5
      2020 TOB--I really was at a loss on how to rate this book. It's not a long book yet it took me days to plow through. I'm not sure if part of my slowness was due to it being a translation or not. Anyway I decided on 4 stars because what a unique book. Each chapter discusses obscure information on an artist and those thoughts are woven into the narrator's story of her life. I couldn't always clearly see the connection but I think that is due to my limitations and not the fault of the author.I will be thinking and talking about this book for awhile but I don't know if I'll recommend it to me friends for reading.
    • 3/5
      Write about what you know is sometimes given as advice to those aspiring to authorship. Ms Gainza is already a writer and author and in Optic Nerve she has put what she knows to good use. She knows about art, she knows Buenos Aires and she knows her own family. These are the foundations on which her novel is built. Art being the central core. It's timely to remind yourself from time to time as you proceed through the lightly connected chapters that it is fiction you are reading not autobiography. The principal character, a young middle class lady, has much in common with the author.Each chapter has an artist and a picture at its heart. The picture prompts memories, connections and stories often of family members. There is a prevalent sense of nostalgia and of serendipity. Authors like W G Sebald and Iain Sinclair have an uncanny way of making unexpected and unlikely connections between places, people, memories and themselves in today's world as they wander through it. Ms Gainza operates in the same way but in a more specialised world of art history and appreciation. She visits art galleries in Buenos Aires, lights on a particular painting, understands it from an artistic point of view but then lets the picture into her mind to find pathways to prompt memories, feelings, stories. The pictures add to her understanding of herself.I've been to many galleries and seen many exhibitions. But I have not often stood for an extended period in front of one painting and tried to understand how the artist came to make it not only by skill but by intelligence and inspiration, and then gone further to feel how that painting has had an impact on me. What thoughts it prompted. Where it took me beyond the space on the wall it occupies. Maybe Ms Gainza will have inspired me to think a little bit more deeply next time a painting catches my attention.