A companion to Still Lives; this thriller exposes dark questions about power and the art world and reveals the fatal mistakes that can befall those who threaten its status quo.
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.
