The Great Man
Kate Christensen
Doubleday, 2007
U.S. hardcover, first edition
ISBN 0385518455
320 pages; $23.95

The greatest irony of The Great Man that it isn’t really about a great man at all, save incidentally. Rather, this novel is about three women who have a relationship with the same man – who, while important to and loved by all of them, never knew or even tried to know the essence of any of them. Getting to know the three of them as they see themselves is something we get to do in this engrossing, witty treasure of a book.

The spark that ignites the book is that two biographers are simultaneously researching the painter Oscar Feldman, the “great man” of the title. Feldman was a painter known for his female nudes – both for painting them and for bedding them. He never ventured into abstraction or any other form of modern art, but stuck solely to representational paintings of the female body. He was opinionated, stubborn, and a complete shit toward women, no matter how much he admired their physicality.

Oscar was married to Abigail, the mother of his only son, the deeply autistic Ethan. It is never clear whether or how much Oscar loved Abigail, or whether she was merely a deep pocket to keep him in food and shelter while he developed his art. Certainly Abigail loved him, but the greater love of her life seems to have been her son, whose care consumed her life. There is evidence that perhaps Oscar had a deep, abiding, unexpressed and unexpressable love for her that was somehow divorced from sexual passion. Perhaps their marriage was oddly happy. And perhaps that is why Abigail does what she does when the biographers come around.

Oscar’s longtime mistress was Teddy, a secretary in the law firm that took care of Oscar’s legal affairs. Teddy is the mother of Oscar’s twin daughters, for whom Oscar never provided a penny in support. In fact, Oscar did not leave Teddy so much as a single painting when he died, and she found out about his death by reading the obituary page in the New York Times. Teddy never wanted Oscar’s support, because she deeply valued her independence. She had a passion for Oscar, clearly, but it seems almost to have been an intellectual passion more than any other sort – not a cool commingling of minds, but a hot, fierce passion that erupted into sex more often than not, a love of argument that contained a heat and light that is rarely depicted in literature. She now lives in genteel poverty, and takes great pride in making do.

Oscar’s sister was Maxine, now a woman in her mid-80’s, who is also an artist. She is, perhaps, a greater artist than Oscar ever was, but she has never received the recognition that Oscar did. Certainly no one is working on her biography. Her work is abstract, cerebral, and her palette limited to black and white. Her work, like Oscar’s, hangs in museums around the world. But she has reached old age without wealth, without a partner, and with precious few friends. She is grumpy and defensive, including of Oscar’s reputation, but also extremely competitive with her famous brother, even after his death. And there is a secret about Oscar that she is protecting, although she seems to be yearning for the secret to be revealed.

The probing of the two biographers leads to dramatic changes in the lives of all three women. It is a delight to see older women – in fact, old women, women well past the point where we would call them middle-aged – portrayed as having passion for life, sexual passion, plans for their futures. They form new friendships, meet new men, reassess old relationships, reassess their own lives. These women are thoroughly alive and do not intend to stop living before they die. There is not a one of them I wouldn’t like to meet and befriend. There is not one of them I do not intend to emulate, each in a different way.

Christensen’s writing is strong and elegant. Her viewpoint wanders from woman to woman, sometimes without warning, so that in one paragraph you’re seeing the world from Teddy’s eyes and in the next from Maxine’s. Seeing the same scene through different eyes – the pride Teddy has in a meal she has assembled, for instance, as seen through the eyes of one of Oscar’s biographer’s – enhances every description (and Christensen’s food description’s are especially gorgeous, leading me to believe that her earlier book, The Epicure’s Lament, is probably very tasty; it’s now on my list).

This book belongs on your shelf next to such volumes as Susan Minot’s Evening and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. I’m surprised not to find The Great Man on the New York Times list of notable books of the year; it’s that good. You’ll definitely find it on mine.