PanThe Los Angeles Times... a formal experiment: a biography as novel ... The book’s inside flap calls it a \'meticulously researched novel.\' But is it? There are factual errors, and she provides a bibliography that could hardly be called exhaustive ... contains good attention to detail and to the painter’s technique ... Hockney’s aspirations, as a gay man and as an artist, come through in the descriptive prose, though readers may wonder whether those are his emotions or Cusset’s story-truth — her imagination of his feelings, a version that fits her narrative. And therein lies the problem ... Cusset’s challenge in such an undertaking is to find the nuance in the details: What are the keys to Hockney’s life and work? To his talent, even his genius? What she has written feels like an overview or, worse, a summary, which is a shortcoming of her formal experiment: Cusset doesn’t get to the interior narrative of Hockney ... Ultimately, the reader can’t really discern what, if anything, is Hockney ... pleasant enough, at turns moving, amusing and engaging. The novel is a breezy read, easily enjoyed on a chaise beside a Hockney swimming pool. One gets little more from this book than one could glean from, say, watching one of the four documentaries Cusset cites in her \'Selected Bibliography\' and reading his Wikipedia entry ... I don’t want to be the reviewer who asks an author to write a book that she didn’t want to write, though maybe her editor should have pushed her to do more. There could be a very fine book in this material.
