Hummel doesn’t flinch from the discomfort of transforming trauma into creative work, detailing who is used up and discarded in the process. Like its prequel, Lesson in Red is a gutting meditation on the relationship between art, life and violence.
Lesson in Red is at its best when Hummel shows how the art scene fits into the city's larger cultural ecosystem ... A transporting follow-up to Hummel's breakout novel.
Drawing even more deeply on her astute insights into the shadow side of the art world, Hummel exposes the toxic competition at a top art school ... The cutthroat arts milieu, precisely and knowingly rendered, is magnetizing, while the intricately knotted plot and the characters’ nuanced psychology are stoked by Hummel’s evisceration of privilege, greed, exploitation, and criminality. Scathing, sexy, suspenseful, and righteous.
Overly earnest ... Rather than present a mystery with moral underpinnings, the author uses Maggie’s investigations to deliver a righteous message about vulnerable women and the commodification of contemporary art, and she tries too hard to connect everything with what happened in Still Lives. Those invested in Maggie from her first outing will best appreciate this follow-up.
This novel might occasionally lose readers unfamiliar with the plot and key players from Still Lives. The story feels overstuffed and the denouement relies too heavily on coincidence, but Hummel delivers a searing indictment of the artistic community’s bias toward White men and the exploitations that follow. A thoughtful thriller that shines a light into the art world’s dark corners.
