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Good Reading : March 2017
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GOODREADINGMAGAZINE.COM.AU GOOD READING MARCH 2017 14 Visitors to New York’s Museum of Modern Art often find themselves bewitched by Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World. The 1948 portrait shows a young woman in a pink dress draped across a corner of a dry field. Her face is turned away from the viewer and she looks to a grey farmhouse jutting up from the hor izon. Her legs are cast uselessly behind her, and her fingers claw at the grass. The woman in the painting was based on Christina Olson, the real-life neighbour of American artist Andrew Wyeth. Christina Baker Kline, who lives in New Jersey, is as fascinated by the people who flock around this painting as she is by the woman in the frame. ‘The painting, in real life, is incredibly compelling,’ says the English-born writer. ‘It’s fascinating to watch people experience it for the first time – they stand very close to it, gazing at that girl in the grass, examining the tiny brushstrokes. There is a mystery, a question, at its heart: why is she stranded at the bottom of the field? Is she fearful? Yearning? What does she desire?’ These questions formed the basis for Kline’s new novel, A Piece of the World, which is narrated by a fictionalised version of the real-life woman who inspired Andrew Wyeth to paint Christina’s World. The author’s previous novel, Orphan Train, spent five weeks at the top of The New York Times bestseller list. But Kline says that this new novel as her most personal project to date. ‘My grandmother and mother were also named Christina, and my grandmother, in South Carolina, grew up in circumstances not unlike Christina Olson’s in Maine: they were both raised in the early 20th century in remote clapboard farmhouses, without heat or electricity or running water. Like Christina Olson, my grandmother as a child was afflicted with physical problems that limited her mobility. I’ve always been intrigued by the subject’s seemingly paradoxical combination of strength and helplessness.’ Olson was posthumously diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, an inher ited degenerative muscular condition that severely restricted her movement. She was bound her to her home, but Olson had formidable resolve and a precocious wit; by the time she was 12, her schoolmaster asked her father if she might stay with the school and eventually take it over. Christina’s father refused the offer, saying she was needed at their property. ‘Life was hard on the farm,’ says Kline. ‘But she was fiercely proud and would not use a wheelchair. Nevertheless, she ran the household. In later years she took to dragging herself around – as we can see in Wyeth’s portrait.’ Much of the novel centres on the relationship Andrew Wyeth – who was a nationally renowned artist by the age of 22 – and Olson, who would become his muse. Artistic brilliance ran in the family; Andrew’s father, N C Wyeth, illustrated early editions of Following on from her two-million-selling historical novel Orphan Train, CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE has delved into the backstory of a famous painting by Andrew Wyeth to write her new novel, A Piece of the World. ANGUS DALTON talks with the author. AUTHOR PROFILE 1 were also named Christina, and my grandmother, in South Carolina, grew up in circumstances not unlike Christina Olson’s in Maine: they were both raised in the early 20th century in remote clapboard farmhouses, without heat or electricity or running water. Like Christina Olson, my grandmother as a child was afflicted with physical problems that limited CHRISTINA’S WORLD Win! TheBookSeatHQ Apr 1 2017 to enter. PM answer by thebookseat.com.au you to have a good read. & & PM us where Follow Comfort convenience good readers for
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