Chaz Wilmot is a painter born outside his time. He possesses a virtuosic command of the techniques of the old masters. He can paint like Leonardo, Goya, Gainsborough—artists whose works sell for millions—but this style of painting is no longer popular, and he refuses to shape his talent to fit the fashion of the day. So Wilmot makes his living cranking out parodies for ads and magazine covers. A break comes when an art dealer obtains for him a commission to restore a Venetian palace fresco by the eighteenth-century master Tiepolo, for a disreputable Italian businessman. Once there, Wilmot discovers that it is not a restoration but a re-creation, indeed a forgery. At first skeptical of the job, he then throws himself into the creative challenge and does the job brilliantly. No one can tell the modern work from something done more than two hundred years ago.
This feat attracts the attention of Werner Krebs, an art dealer with a dark past and shadier present who becomes Wilmot's friend and patron. Wilmot is suddenly working with a fervor he hasn't felt in years, but his burst of creative activity is accompanied by strange interludes: Without warning, he finds himself reliving moments from his past—not as memories but as if they are happening all over again. Soon, it is no longer his own past he's revisiting; he believes he can travel back to the seventeenth century, where he lived as the Spanish artist Diego Rodríguez de Silva Velázquez, one of the most famous painters in history. Wilmot begins to fantasize that as Velázquez, he has created a masterpiece, a stunning portrait of a nude. When the painting actually turns up, he doesn't know if he painted it or if he imagined the whole thing.
Little by little, Wilmot enters a mirror house of illusions and hallucinations that propels him into a secret world of gangsters, greed, and murder, with his mystery patron at the center of it all, either as the mastermind behind a plot to forge a painting worth hundreds of millions, or as the man who will save Wilmot from obscurity and madness.
In Chaz Wilmot, we meet the rarest breed of literary hero, one for whom the reader feels almost personally responsible. By turns brutally honest and self-deceptive, scornful of the world while yearning to make his mark on it, Wilmot comes astonishingly alive for the reader, and his perilous journey toward the truth becomes our own.
The Forgery of Venus, a blend of erudition, unflagging narrative brio, and emotional depth, brings us inexorably toward the intersection where genius and insanity collide. Miraculously inventive, this book cements Gruber's reputation as one of the most imaginative and gifted writers of our time.
Booklist (starred review)
“Gruber is on a roll…[a] terrific art-historical thriller…a perfect place to get lost for a few days. Once again, Gruber mines a popular vein and strikes gold.”
Publishers Weekly
Gruber and reader Eric Conger do away with all certainty in this literary thriller, in which a brilliant but exceptionally troubled contemporary painter becomes embroiled in a scheme to forge a Velasquez painting, even as he is tormented with amnesic breaks and visions that seem to be from Velasquez's own life. There's a slight shift in pitch as Conger switches from the nameless narrator of the novel's framing sequence to the main story's protagonist, Chaz Wilmot, but other than that, he doesn't attempt to differentiate the other characters' voices from Chaz's. That's an entirely appropriate choice, as this is a frighteningly introspective narrative, recounted by a man who literally does not know who he is from one moment to the next. Is he going mad, being driven mad, actually shifting among realities or some combination of those options? For this audiobook to work, the reader and the author must make the narrator's hallucinatory perspective convincing, and both succeed wonderfully and chillingly at this task. Simultaneous release with the Morrow hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 18). (Apr.)
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Library Journal
In his latest thriller, Gruber (The Book of Air and Shadows) tells the story of Chaz Wilmot, a talented painter in the style of the Old Masters who is unable to make a living in the art world of today. His salvation comes when he is summoned to Italy to restore a ceiling painted by Tiepolo. Once there, he realizes that the job is not so much a restoration as it is a forgery. His work on the ceiling earns him the interest of a wealthy patron who hires him to paint other forgeries. Problems arise when Chaz begins to relive situations from his past and then travel back to the 17th century, where he becomes the Spanish artist Velázquez. Soon, he is no longer sure of even his own identity. Is he losing his mind, or is someone trying to make him think so? Gruber writes with a deft hand, creating a fallen hero who is likable despite his faults. Recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ12/07.]
—Nanci Milone Hill
Kirkus Reviews
The stupendous talent of an otherwise wasted illustrator pushes him to the edge of madness and leads to the creation of an original work by a master who has been dead for centuries. Nobody mixes art, sex, drugs and wit quite like Gruber (The Book of Air and Shadows, 2007, etc.). Here he looks at representational painting, the creative imperative, forgery and the love of children, and the result is again irresistible. Chaz Wilmot, gifted artistic hack, child of a gifted artistic hack, hands a CD to his old Columbia classmate and one-time close friend and asks him to give it a play. It's the narrative of Wilmot's adventures as the artist Diego Velasquez, a trip that began with the ingestion of an experimental hallucinogen administered by yet another old Columbia classmate, now a doctor. The drug sends Wilmot into the skin of the little boy who would grow up to be perhaps the most gifted painter of all time. These intensely interesting journeys are not quite relaxing for Wilmot. In ways they are a reproach for the life he has led, refusing to create the art his ex-wife Lotte, now a small-time gallery owner, still urges him to make. (If he would just cut loose and paint, he could get proper medical care for his sick young son.) The aftereffect of the drug is that he can and does paint, possibly better than ever, concentrating as never before. But those Velasquez trips are increasingly intriguing: He's in Renaissance Madrid painting the king and then back in the present, still painting better than anyone ever has. So well, in fact, that he gains the interest of those in the rich and frightening world of forgers. Alas, the drug also seems to be wiping out his past. Fast, frightening and, asusual, richly imagined.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"This is an art lover’s dream. Mystery and obsession are textured with art history in a plot that explores not only the shifting nature of art, but also the complex nature of identity.
Chicago Sun-Times
"Ingenious...The author owns his subject matter and packs it with well-researched details, making this...a successful, suspenseful examination of insanity, forgery and reality."
Arizona Republic
"Gruber writes thrillers for smart people. This novel is about art and creativity. That sounds lofty, but Gruber gives it humor and heart. The ensuing drama, involving a forgery believed to be the work of Diego Velazquez, keeps you on your toes."
Tampa Tribune
"Michael Gruber giv(es) us a finale in which the excitement level is high because we don’t know who, if anyone, to trust. It’s a satisfying conclusion, one that will leave readers debating the morality of Wilmot’s final decision."
Seattle Times
"Michael Gruber’s new thriller, THE FORGERY OF VENUS, is as layered as a luminous portrait by an old master. A tour-de-force combination of suspense and characterization, as well as a primer on the world of art and art forgery."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"A quick and sharp romp through the art world. Downright delicious."
Toronto Globe and Mail
"This terrific art thriller has history, thieves, insider snippets and a convoluted plot to keep you guessing."
Boston Globe
"(An) imaginative novel of psychological suspense."
Edmonton Journal (Canada)
"Stunning...utterly unique, and breathtakingly original. It’s one of those novels you want to press upon your friends, fully confident that it will not disappoint. It’s a tour de force performance from Gruber, and a novel worthy of considerable attention."
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
"Michael Gruber’s large and growing number of fans won’t be disappointed with his sixth novel, a thriller in the art history vein. He’s woven a tale within a tale within a tale, all filled with marvelous twists and turns that build suspense and heighten the mystery until the satisfying conclusion."
New Orleans Times-Picayune
"THE FORGERY OF VENUS is the latest in Gruber’s series of amazing books. He has applied his deft touch to everything from Shakespeare to shamanism, yielding a finely drawn portrait of an engrossing world every time."
USA Today
"Tantalizing...exhilarating. Retains the power from the first chapter to keep readers desperate for the suspenseful, addictive fix of every succeeding one. FORGERY OF VENUS is a highly intelligent novel that entertains and educates."
Wichita Eagle
"Smart and literate. Gruber approaches art with obvious appreciation, and has woven a clever story with plenty of detail."
Booklist
"Gruber is on a roll…[a] terrific art-historical thriller…a perfect place to get lost for a few days. Once again, Gruber mines a popular vein and strikes gold."
Chronicle Herald
"Michael Gruber has created a first-rate thriller that throws the reader into the art world, past and present."