Carol Wallace. (2011). Leaving Van Gogh: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group.

Carol Wallace. 2011. Leaving Van Gogh: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group.

Carol Wallace, Leaving Van Gogh: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group, 2011.

Carol Wallace. Leaving Van Gogh: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group, 2011.

OverDrive Product Record

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{00F3021B-217C-4967-8D81-9521DA3F2292}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{00F3021B-217C-4967-8D81-9521DA3F2292}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/00F/302/1B/{00F3021B-217C-4967-8D81-9521DA3F2292}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/00F/302/1B/{00F3021B-217C-4967-8D81-9521DA3F2292}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

formats

1. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781588369437
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 196469
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
2. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B004J4WNI0
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 196469
   • name: Kindle Book
   • id: ebook-kindle
3. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781588369437
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 196469
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • id: ebook-overdrive

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 1400068797

mediaType

eBook

primaryCreator

• role: Author
• name: Carol Wallace

title

Leaving Van Gogh

dateAdded

2011-07-18T17:03:30.48Z

contentDetails

1. • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=480498
   • type: text/html
   • account:
     • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
     • id: 1151

sortTitle

Leaving Van Gogh A Novel

crossRefId

480498

subtitle

A Novel

id

00f3021b-217c-4967-8d81-9521da3f2292

starRating

3.9

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain

False

formats

1. • fileName: LeavingVanGogh_9781588369437_480498
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 2289780
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781588369437
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 196469
   • rights:
     1. • type: Copying
        • value: 0
     2. • type: Printing
        • value: 0
     3. • type: Lending
        • value: 0
     4. • type: ReadAloud
        • value: 0
     5. • type: ExpirationRights
        • value: 0
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
   • onSaleDate: 4/19/2011
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
        • url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/00F/302/1B/LeavingVanGoghANovel9781588369437.epub
     2. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=00F3021B-217C-4967-8D81-9521DA3F2292&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
2. • fileName: LeavingVanGogh_480498
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 196469
     2. • type: ASIN
        • value: B004J4WNI0
   • name: Kindle Book
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-kindle
   • onSaleDate: 4/19/2011
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
        • url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/00F/302/1B/LeavingVanGoghANovel9781588369437.epub
     2. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=00F3021B-217C-4967-8D81-9521DA3F2292&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
3. • fileName: LeavingVanGogh_9781588369437_480498
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9781588369437
     2. • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
        • value: 196469
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-overdrive
   • onSaleDate: 4/19/2011
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
        • url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/00F/302/1B/LeavingVanGoghANovel9781588369437.epub
     2. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=00F3021B-217C-4967-8D81-9521DA3F2292&.epub-sample.overdrive.com

keywords

1. • value: historic fiction
2. • value: literary fiction
3. • value: Van Gogh
4. • value: Historical
5. • value: Sagas
6. • value: historical novel
7. • value: Fiction
8. • value: novels
9. • value: Saga
10. • value: Historical Fiction
11. • value: Genre Fiction
12. • value: Drama
13. • value: art
14. • value: France
15. • value: Artists
16. • value: mental illness
17. • value: historical saga
18. • value: historical novels
19. • value: historical fiction book
20. • value: historical fiction novel
21. • value: historical drama
22. • value: history books
23. • value: literary historical fiction
24. • value: historical books
25. • value: historical fiction novels
26. • value: historical fiction books
27. • value: books about history
28. • value: historical book
29. • value: historical fiction saga
30. • value: historical sagas
31. • value: historical fiction sagas
32. • value: historical dramas

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Wallace, Carol
   • bioText: Carol Wallace is the author of numerous books, including The Official Preppy Handbook, which she coauthored. Leaving Van Gogh is her first historical novel. A graduate of Princeton University, Wallace received a M.A. in art history from Columbia University in 2006. The research for her M.A. thesis provided the foundation for Leaving Van Gogh. Wallace lives in New York.
   • name: Carol Wallace

imprint

Random House

publishDate

2011-04-19T00:00:00-04:00

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

Leaving Van Gogh

fullDescription

In the summer of 1890, in the French town of Auvers-sur-Oise, Vincent van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver.  He died two days later, at the age of thirty-seven, largely unknown despite having completed over two thousand works of art that would go on to become some of the most important and valued in the world.          
In this riveting novel, Carol Wallace brilliantly navigates the mysteries surrounding the master artist’s death, relying on meticulous research to paint an indelible portrait of Van Gogh’s final days—and the friendship that may or may not have destroyed him. Telling Van Gogh’s story from an utterly new perspective—that of his personal physician, Dr. Gachet, specialist in mental illness and great lover of the arts—Wallace allows us to view the legendary painter as we’ve never seen him before.  In our narrator’s eyes, Van Gogh is an irresistible puzzle, a man whose mind, plagued by demons, poses the most potentially rewarding challenge of Gachet’s career. 
Wallace’s narrative brims with suspense and rich psychological insight as it tackles haunting questions about Van Gogh’s fate. A masterly, gripping novel that explores the price of creativity, Leaving Van Gogh is a luminous story about what it means to live authentically, and the power and limits of friendship.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Los Angeles Times
   • content: "Riveting...Vincent's vitality and unique intelligence wash over the reader--much as they do when looking at his paintings. Wallace deepens our thinking about the painter by imagining the conversations he had with Gachet and his family and in the gentle way that she imagines his demeanor between manic episodes...The book is truly delightful."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life
   • content: "A haunting novel of bold strokes and fine-grained gestures, one that resonates long after its last, luminous page. In Carol Wallace's masterful hands Van Gogh's pictures spring to life every bit as brilliantly as does the painter himself."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Elinor Lipman, author of The Family Man
   • content: "How did Carol Wallace do this? Her novel so thrillingly and compassionately illuminates the tragic life of Vincent van Gogh that he is now lodged in my heart like a beloved lost relative. I am awed and enthralled, and so grateful for this perfect blend of artistic authority and suberb storytelling."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Stephanie Cowell, author of Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet
   • content: "This sensitively written novel, with its many passages of deep beauty and insight, reveals the tragic Van Gogh as clearly as if he sat across your room. Told by the aging doctor who wants to rectify the one great failure of his own life by saving the distraught artist who perhaps does not wish to be saved, Leaving Van Gogh is a moving and profound book about the preciousness of the gifts of art and love and what we can mean to each other."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Rebecca Stott , author of Ghostwalk
   • content: "Beautifully textured, painterly, and insightful--reading this book is like stepping into one of Van Gogh's paintings."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Ellen Feldman, author of Lucy and Scottsboro
   • content: "A rich, meticulously researched novel that probes the passion of genius, and the demands of love and friendship. With a painterly eye, Wallace translates Van Gogh's dazzling canvases into luminous prose and lets the reader see the universe as the great Impressionist did."
7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 17, 2011
     With several middle-grade books behind her, Wallace makes her adult fiction debut with an intense look at the last months of Vincent van Gogh through the eyes of Paul Gachet, a doctor specializing in mental illness. In the spring of 1890 Theo van Gogh, Vincent's younger brother, approaches Gachet with a request. Vincent was moving to Auvres, France, to paint and seek peace in the countryside. Theo wants Gachet, who once lived in the region, to supervise his brother. Gachet, a known patron of the arts and an amateur artist himself, agrees and is immediately drawn to van Gogh's luminous work. As the seasons pass he bears witness to the painter's mental anguish and struggles to determine what maladies so consume him. As he watches the artist's troubling downfall, Gachet must determine how best to care for van Gogh—and the family his death would leave in need. Tapping a deep well of research, Wallace paints a portrait of how madness can both make and break a man. But by making the clinical Gachet his narrator, the author pushes readers away, rather than giving them a chance to get to know the haunted figure behind the canvas.

8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 1, 2011
     

     Wallace, who has written 20 mostly humorous or lightweight books since she co-authored The Official Preppy Handbook (1980), enters the realm of historical fiction with this novel about Vincent van Gogh.

     Like Alyson Richman in The Last Van Gogh (2006), Wallace concentrates on the artist's last days and his involvement with the family of Dr. Gachet. The basic facts are known: Van Gogh spent his last 70 days in Auvers painting a huge number of works before he shot himself; while in Auvers he spent considerable time with Gachet, a widower with two children, Marguerite and Paul. While Richman focused on Vincent's relationship with Gachet's daughter Marguerite—whose portrait he painted as well as Gachet's—Wallace has Gachet narrate. According to him, he has always befriended painters, amassing an impressive collection of impressionist paintings, and dabbles in painting and etching himself. Vincent's brother Theo, who supports Vincent, employs Gachet to watch over the artist. Gachet quickly recognizes the brilliance of Vincent's work. When Vincent's erratic behavior flares, Gachet suggests a "cordial" to soothe him, but Vincent tells Gachet that he must paint to keep sane. Both Marguerite and Paul grow obsessed with Vincent and follow him around. Vincent thinks of Marguerite only as a subject to paint. He becomes furious at Paul when Paul's dog destroys one of his paintings. After Theo comes to visit with his wife and baby, Gachet realizes he has advanced syphilis. But Theo's financial responsibility to his family drives him to keep working as an art dealer even as his health declines. Learning of Theo's condition, Vincent becomes unable to paint. Without painting he has no wish to live. Gachet, still guilty that he refused his consumptive wife's plea to help her die years earlier, decides to help Vincent by leaving his loaded gun where Vincent will find it.

     The drama is muted, but van Gogh's mix of genius and madness continues to fascinate.

     (COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     November 1, 2010
     

     Wallace made her name as coauthor of The Official Preppy Handbook, but her debut novel backtracks to Vincent van Gogh's final days, told from the perspective of his dedicated psychiatric doctor, Paul-Ferdinand Gachet. Note that Wallace just received a master's in art history from Columbia. For readers who love Susan Vreeland's works and van Gogh generally.

     Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 1, 2011
      What happened to Vincent van Gogh after he cut off his ear? Wallace (The Official Preppy Handbook, 1980) begins in the aftermath of that event, when van Gogh retires to the French countryside under the care of psychiatrist Dr. Paul Gachet. From this historical base, she imagines van Goghs final months through Gachets eyes. Drawn into the doctors family circle, Vincent initially thrives and paints furiously, work that Wallace expertly brings alive, down to the brushstroke. Yet van Gogh succumbs to darkness, and Gachet is unable to treat him. Ultimately, this is not so much a novel about art or genius as it is about mental illness, and includes flashbacks to Gachets training at an insane asylum. With profound empathy, compassion, and insight, Wallace fully inhabits both Vincents despondency and Gachets futility as they despair of a cure, pondering the ease with which a wound can be stitched versus the baffling maladies of the mind. Who has not felt the shroud of melancholy? Gachet wonders. It is a fine line, indeed, that separates the mentally ill from the sane.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      January 1, 2011
      

      Parisian psychiatrist Paul Gachet receives an appeal from Theo van Gogh on behalf of his brother, Vincent. A gifted painter with a tortured soul, Vincent has been in and out of asylums for years--perhaps Dr. Gachet, renowned for his work concerning nervous diseases, could provide the medical help that has thus far been lacking? Gachet, himself an amateur painter who believes in the fundamental treatments of good nutrition, fresh air, and a stable atmosphere, invites Vincent to become a guest in his own home in Auvers. Theo has difficulties of his own, yet he unfailingly provides his brother with ample supplies of paint and canvas. Despite their best efforts, Vincent cannot find relief from his maladies. As he becomes increasingly despondent and loses his ability to paint, we see that the end will come too soon for a man with a miraculous talent and far too much sensitivity for this world. Wallace (coauthor, The Official Preppy Handbook) successfully characterizes the inner lives of both the painter and his troubled physician as their paths briefly cross, then diverge. VERDICT While discomfortingly sad, this in-depth look at the final few months of van Gogh's life offers insight into that damning, draining combination of genius and madness. Read this with a volume of van Gogh reprints at your side for reference. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/10.]--Susanne Wells, P.L. of Cincinnati & Hamilton Cty., OH

      Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      January 1, 2011
      

      Wallace, who has written 20 mostly humorous or lightweight books since she co-authored The Official Preppy Handbook (1980), enters the realm of historical fiction with this novel about Vincent van Gogh.

      Like Alyson Richman in The Last Van Gogh (2006), Wallace concentrates on the artist's last days and his involvement with the family of Dr. Gachet. The basic facts are known: Van Gogh spent his last 70 days in Auvers painting a huge number of works before he shot himself; while in Auvers he spent considerable time with Gachet, a widower with two children, Marguerite and Paul. While Richman focused on Vincent's relationship with Gachet's daughter Marguerite--whose portrait he painted as well as Gachet's--Wallace has Gachet narrate. According to him, he has always befriended painters, amassing an impressive collection of impressionist paintings, and dabbles in painting and etching himself. Vincent's brother Theo, who supports Vincent, employs Gachet to watch over the artist. Gachet quickly recognizes the brilliance of Vincent's work. When Vincent's erratic behavior flares, Gachet suggests a "cordial" to soothe him, but Vincent tells Gachet that he must paint to keep sane. Both Marguerite and Paul grow obsessed with Vincent and follow him around. Vincent thinks of Marguerite only as a subject to paint. He becomes furious at Paul when Paul's dog destroys one of his paintings. After Theo comes to visit with his wife and baby, Gachet realizes he has advanced syphilis. But Theo's financial responsibility to his family drives him to keep working as an art dealer even as his health declines. Learning of Theo's condition, Vincent becomes unable to paint. Without painting he has no wish to live. Gachet, still guilty that he refused his consumptive wife's plea to help her die years earlier, decides to help Vincent by leaving his loaded gun where Vincent will find it.

      The drama is muted, but van Gogh's mix of genius and madness continues to fascinate.

      (COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

popularity

48

links

• self:
  • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/00f3021b-217c-4967-8d81-9521da3f2292/metadata
  • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json

id

00f3021b-217c-4967-8d81-9521da3f2292

starRating

3.8

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{00F3021B-217C-4967-8D81-9521DA3F2292}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{00F3021B-217C-4967-8D81-9521DA3F2292}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/00F/302/1B/{00F3021B-217C-4967-8D81-9521DA3F2292}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/00F/302/1B/{00F3021B-217C-4967-8D81-9521DA3F2292}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

isPublicPerformanceAllowed

False

languages

1. • code: en
   • name: English

subjects

1. • value: Fiction
2. • value: Literature
3. • value: Historical Fiction

publishDateText

04/19/2011

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9781400068791

mediaType

eBook

shortDescription

In the summer of 1890, in the French town of Auvers-sur-Oise, Vincent van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver.  He died two days later, at the age of thirty-seven, largely unknown despite having completed over two thousand works of art that would go on to become some of the most important and valued in the world.          
In this riveting novel, Carol Wallace brilliantly navigates the mysteries surrounding the master artist’s death, relying on meticulous research to paint an indelible portrait of Van Gogh’s final days—and the friendship that may or may not have destroyed him. Telling Van Gogh’s story from an utterly new perspective—that of his personal physician, Dr. Gachet, specialist in mental illness and great lover of the arts—Wallace allows us to view the legendary painter as we’ve never seen him before.  In our narrator’s eyes, Van Gogh is an irresistible...

sortTitle

Leaving Van Gogh A Novel

crossRefId

480498

subtitle

A Novel

publisher

Random House Publishing Group

bisacCodes

1. • code: FIC014000
   • description: FICTION / Historical / General
2. • code: FIC019000
   • description: Fiction / Literary
3. • code: FIC041000
   • description: Fiction / Biographical