Acquired Book By: I started hosting blog tours with The Write Reads in 2020 and prior to hosting with Dave (who runs the tours and has built an incredible community of the socially bookish behind it) I was following their feeds via Twitter. I took an unexpected hiatus from hosting their tours until this Summer, 2024 wherein I reconnected with Dave and started to get back into the tours as they were available to join. This marks my first blog tour with The Write Reads this year and I hope it will be the first of many yet to come before the year closes, too. I love finding new Independent publishers as much as I love finding new niches of fiction and Non-Fiction alike in which to absorb a story or style of narrative I haven’t yet come across and through hosting for The Write Reads I am finding my journey of discovery is regularly heightened to travel into new spheres of where story can take us all.
I received a complimentary copy of “The Vanitas” from the publisher Neem Tree Press in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Hallo, Hallo dear hearts!
Art and Art History have been mutual passions and interests of mine for quite a long time throughout my life. I used to study art as a child and as I grew into an adult, art started to fall by the wayside. It never lost its glow of joy in me but the hours I could devout to learning it and cultivating my own style within the mediums of interest waned a bit and that was one reason I developed my passion for photography a bit faster than (traditional) formats of art. One day I’d love to re-explore art in tangible mediums of joy but for now, photography makes me happy.
On this note, I have been curious about understanding the different styles of Classical Art and what drew the classical artists to create their styles of art in general. I studied a bit of this in school but being it was high school and not college, I can’t say they went into a lot of depth of detail about any of it but just scratched the surface of it for the casual reader. What drew me into wanting to read this book was the creative way Kendall approached writing it and how he encouraged all of us to peer back into History and seek out a better understanding of both art and the inspiration behind the art itself.
I love learning new things but with art, what is dynamic about the learning curve is how it is interpreted and understood by the eye of the beholder looking at the art directly. Art changes perspective and understanding each time one of us glimpses it and thereby, art itself expands and contacts its own unique version of itself continuously per each new person who awakens a keen interest to pursue it.
This marks my first journey into reading selections of interest by Neem Tree Press – as they are a new publisher for me to read and discover, too. It is a lovely segue this end of Summer to read something outside my regular choices within literature and to dive into a topical exploration of something I had a marked interest in seeking out when I was younger. It is lovely how those interests and passions can come back to us lateron and when we’re not expecting them to re-arrive in our lives, too.
Brew yourself a cuppa and enjoy reading my thoughts on this lovely collection of stories.
The Vanitas
Subtitle: And Other Tales of Art and Obsession
by Jake Kendall
Source: Publisher via The Write Reads
Spanning three hundred years of art history, The Vanitas & Other Tales of Art and Obsession tells the stories of those with an insatiable hunger for creation – those who may sacrifice friendships, careers, romance, and even their own happiness in pursuit of a vision.
Weaving art styles such as Cubism, Surrealism, and the Baroque into his prose, Jake Kendall has crafted a vivid and inventive collection. Each story is complemented by a black and white illustration, drawing out the visually evocative nature of the writing and offering readers a unique artistic delight.
Places to find the book:
ISBN: 9781911107019
on 24th September, 2024
Format: Paperback Edition
Pages: 272
Published by: Neem Tree Press | Follow via Insta (@neemtreepress)
an imprint of Unbound Publishing
Available Formats: Paperback and Ebook
Converse via: #ArtHistory, #ArtHistoryFiction, #JakeKendall
as well as #TheWriteReads & #TheVanitas
Uniquely told in short story format:
When you first begin reading The Vanitas – you are entreated to a lovely short story format of narrative – wherein, your drawn quite immediately into the life of Lucien. He’s a humble boy and one who is earnestly hopeful to help pull his family up by their bootstraps and maintain a bit of normalcy and stability of income if he can manage it somehow despite his youth and inexperience. There is so much emotion and drama playing out in this piece by Kendall, it keeps you enthralled by Lucien’s own misguided thoughts and the pursuit of what inspired his passenger on the boat.
He truly tucked us close to the psychological effects of what was happening to his characters. He peeled away the layers to reveal their raw edges and gave us glimpses into madness and obsession as he told their stories. Each of these stories serves as vignettes of life as it is being lived and speaks to the reader about the passion behind the art and/or the artist and the compulsion to create at the cost of everything else.
My Review of The Vanitas:
I’d like to continue the tradition of reading short story anthologies on Jorie Loves A Story by highlighting the stories in this collection which spoke to me the most as a reader. Thereby, I might not mention all the stories contained in this book, but I will discuss the ones I enjoyed the most to read and why they resonated with me the most.
: Impression, Sunrise :
The first character we meet is Lucien who lives in a small village of fishermen and of whose family has endured a tragic accident and their station in life has fallen quite grim. Lucien is emboldened with courage to help his family even if his own personal safety might be put in jeopardy as it was when he agreed to a stranger’s curious demand to be taken out to sea. The ways in which Kendall painted Lucien’s story to life felt like a much fuller story and one of longer length – the best kind of short story for me to read as it encourages your imagination and your heart to knit together what is left unsaid by the time the story concludes. I was so struck by this young lad’s plight in life, I had nearly forgotten the connective thread amongst these stories were the ‘artists’ themselves. Kendall simply had me lost at sea and caught inside the fears and worries of Lucien to such a degree I was quite on pins awaiting the ending!
The beauty of the story isn’t just Lucien’s side of it but the heart-pulse inspiration of the artist. The man who had to go to sea in order to pursue the subject of his inspiration. That is one of the more awe-inspiring moments I’ve read in a long while – and one that is so very innocent yet holds the majestic curiosity for us all to behold. It is sometimes the simple things in our lives which leaves us without words to describe their powerful impact and I loved how Kendall made the subject of the artist such a humbling sight for us all to reconsider and to take stock of our surroundings in a bit of a different ray of light.
: Under Shimmering Constellations :
The story is quick-footed and executed rather acutely to focus on the madness of the artist at the centre of it. Kendall aptly shows how a grieving widow can find herself in a vulnerable position in both life and heart whilst having to deal with the unwanted advances of another person who clearly doesn’t quite understand all the ways in which her life has now changed. Or rather only wanted to see the opportunity for themself within that changed circumstance. You rally behind her and earnestly hope that the person who exits through the garden stays far away and perhaps better yet only focuses on his art thereafter and until his last days. It was an interesting take on the artist most of us have heard about and many of us are familiar with his artistic works, too. It also shows how someone can prey on someone going through a tragedy in their life and not forestall their own intentions out of honour for the recently deceased.
: Composition #5 :
Kendall pulls us into a vortex of art and obsession and of two souls colliding into each other. For the artist she was finding someone who would tether her back into her art and for the man caught in her web of lust and affection, he was searching for himself out of the shadows of her attention. He was easily influenced by her attentions and her needs to be fulfilled by what he could give to her but unfortunately, he didn’t think about what that kind of obsessive love would do to him in return. Of all the stories in this collection, this delves into how art and madness and lucidity and brilliance can all become a torrent of paint and productivity at the risk of one’s health. He showcased the spiral of despair and the pursuit to create out of the nothingness of an artistic block of inspiration. He also showed how far an artist will take themself to recapture what they lost and how maddening it is to see the artist forsake everyone else in order to produce the art itself.
On the writing styling of Jake Kendall:
Kendall has a knack and eye for dramatic storytelling wherein you are so compelled to read his collection simply due to how he’s approached the telling of the tales themselves. Except to say, there were moments within the collection itself where I found myself pulling away from the stories and having to exit quite a few of them early-on. This had more to do with my sensitivities to certain kinds of stories and the visual inclusions of how their told moreso than any other reason I could give to forego reading them. Kendall is definitely a writer of historical narratives and tucks you close to his subject and characters – how he found a fusion of truth, art and history to put on full display within his stories is quite extraordinary.
Some of the imagery in this collection takes you a bit unaware of how violently it can be presented. It isn’t for the sensitive reader and as I tried to merge out of the short stories in the beginning half of the novel and move into The Vanitas which occupies the latter half of the collection, I found myself retreating back to the front of the collection. I actually preferred the shorter format over the long format Kendall explored in this collection. The short form allowed us to peer into the characters’ lives only for a few moments of their lives – sometimes for months as within Composition #5 and at other times, only for a few hours. Within that time span of each of the short stories – so much was presented by Kendall that you felt you had lived a longer life with the characters. That is the beauty of the short form in fiction for me – how much depth can be composed within such a short expanse of words and narrative. Sometimes for me, such as with this collection – a longer story sometimes doesn’t connect with me as readily as the shorter ones.
There were overlays of the artists which you could easily see yourself as you read one of the stories – especially the one which featured Van Gogh as Kendall knitted certain details about him you would recognise into the backbone of his story within Under Shimmering Constellations. Kendall has definitely given us a lot to contemplate by this collection but also has presented a unique port of entry into the world of art and the history of art through his stories which illuminate the connection between the artists and the appreciators of their work.
: Notes on some of the stories which simply weren’t my cuppa tea :
There was one story in particular I was hoping to read through to the end, but at one point or another, it became a bit too difficult to continue reading it. That story was the second one featured in the collection: Thirty-Seven Neugrabenstrasse. On the surface of it, I felt it had a good premise although writ a bit vague for us to understand the fuller scope of what was happening to Markus. I had wished a bit more was explained about why his mother left and the circumstances he was living through with his father. I realised it was meant to sound vague on one hand but for me, some of the details were left too open to interpretation. Which is why I wasn’t able to continue with this one and opted to read another story instead.
Whereas with the Medusa story – it was one of incredible tragedy and heartbreak of a ship which was doomed to sink by an ill-fitted Captain and a crew who was left stranded after having to abandon ship. In this story, an artist wants to memorialise the crew with a painting which captures the pain and suffering of the crew and the ordeal they suffered at sea. Except to say, he was missing the point whenever he attempted to paint what they were telling him. He was focused on the raft and not the people; he was choosing to see only a part of the horror and not the fuller scope of it, too. I had to exit the story though when the fate of the crew took a few left turns, and the narrative was a bit harder to read for me. I know other readers who are sensitive to certain depictions of violence and/or in this instance cannibalism might take a swift exit themselves. I will say, to his credit he did capture a moment of a nightmaric memory wrapped inside the mind of man suffering from PTSD very beautifully. You felt like you were sinking into the lost depths of the sea yourself as you read his own reaction to standing once again on planks of wood.
There were other stories I simply couldn’t connect with at all. I started to read them and found myself pulling out of them as quickly as I had begun to read them, too. I find myself in that position quite often when reading anthologies and collections of short stories, essays and novellas. Some quickly motivate me to turn the pages and others, simply cannot find connection with me at all. I find that is one of the beauties of reading such collections – as each story contained in a collection has the potential of resonating with us. Some might prefer different stories than I do as well and that makes it even more interesting to denote which story is resonating with which reader especially on a blog tour showcasing the same book. Likewise, with this collection, I highlighted the stories which entertained me the most as a reader and which had such a heavy presence of thought and contemplation after having been read.
This blog tour is courtesy of:
Be sure to follow all the lovely tags socially (ie. #bookstagram, BlueSky, etc) to seek out more exciting content on this blog tour celebrating the book + the author!!
{SOURCES: Book cover for “The Vanitas”, book synopsis, author biography, author photograph of Jake Kendall and the tour banner were all provided by The Write Reads and are used with permission. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Blog graphics created by Jorie via Canva: Book Review banner and the Comment Box Banner.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2024.
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