Kindle Price:	$9.99
Sold by:	Macmillan Price set by seller.

Read with our free app

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Follow the author

Maylis de Kerangal

+ Follow

More books from this author

Painting Time: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Maylis de Kerangal (Author), Jessica Moore (Translator) Format: Kindle Edition

3.9 94 ratings

See all formats and editions

Named a most anticipated book of 2021 by The Guardian | The Millions

An aesthetic and existential coming-of-age novel exploring the apprenticeship of a young female painter

In Maylis de Kerangal’s Painting Time, we are introduced to the burgeoning young artist Paula Karst, who is enrolled at the famous Institut de Peinture in Brussels. Unlike the friends she makes at school, Paula strives to understand the specifics of what she’s painting—replicating a wood’s essence or a marble’s wear requires method, technique, and talent, she finds, but also something else: craftsmanship. She resolutely chooses the painstaking demands of craft over the abstraction of high art.

With the attention of a documentary filmmaker, de Kerangal follows Paula’s apprenticeship, punctuated by brushstrokes, hard work, sleepless nights, sore muscles, and long, festive evenings. After completing her studies at the Institute, Paula continues to practice her art in Paris, in Moscow, then in Italy on the sets of great films, all as if rehearsing for a grand finale: a job working on Lascaux IV, a facsimile reproduction of the world’s most famous paleolithic cave art and the apotheosis of human cultural expression.

An enchanted, atmospheric, and highly aesthetic coming-of-age novel, Painting Time is an intimate and unsparing exploration of craft, inspiration, and the contours of the contemporary art world. As she did in her acclaimed novels The Heart and The Cook, Maylis de Kerangal unravels a tightly wound professional world to reveal the beauty within.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"So good it makes me want to puke . . . I discovered Painting Time in a bookstore, never having heard of its author, and went on to recommend it widely and increasingly indignantly to many people . . . [Kerangal's] books aren’t just technical portraits but careful, steady re-creations of emotional worlds . . . [Painting Time] derives its power from the precision that accrues within it." ―Lauren Oyler, The New Yorker

"There is something magnificently true about De Kerangal’s fiction, which braids technical fluency with winged prose . . . 'Capsules of pure sensation'–it’s a description worth stealing to describe this novel, which is strung together image by beautiful image. This is writing that defies haste, that slows the eye . . . That [De Kerangal's] new novel's painterly resonances feel elemental, rather than effortful, cements her reputation as one of contemporary fiction’s most gifted sentence builders." ―Beejay Silcox, The Guardian

"[Decorative painting] is given a thrilling treatment in Maylis de Kerangal’s [Painting Time] . . . Who else writes with such poetry about the tools of trade, and the intricacies of work? Michael Ondaatje springs to mind, but Maylis de Kerangal is mining a rich and individual seam." ―Jonathan Gibbs, Times Literary Supplement

"Celebrated French novelist Kerangal . . . is a master of the metaphysical bildungsroman . . . [An] enthralling tale of vocation, discovery, and love . . . Kerangal balances the gloriously sensuous with the deeply reflective in an exquisite and omniscient streaming narration as she explores the title's implications . . . Kerangal’s elegant, sexy, subtly Proustian, and fluidly dimensional drama of discipline and passion, imitation and imagination is resplendently evocative and exhilarating." ―Donna Seaman, Booklist

"As she did with The Cook, award-winning French author de Kerangal offers stunning portraiture suffused with the joy and meaning of work. . .There's only one word for it: superbe." ―Library Journal (starred review)

"[A] sensuous, language–relishing, richly evocative new work . . . A curiosity as introspective, finely wrought, and devotedly crafted as the art form it traces." ―Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Maylis de Kerangal is the author of several books in French, including Naissance d’un pont, (published in English as Birth of a Bridge), which won of the Prix Franz Hessel and Prix Médicis in 2010; Réparer les vivants, which won the Grand Prix RTL-Lire and the Student Choice Novel of the Year from France Culture and Télérama and whose English translation, The Heart, was one of the Wall Street Journal’s Ten Best Fiction Works of 2016 and the winner of the 2017 Wellcome Book Prize; and Un chemin de tables, whose English translation, The Cook, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. She lives in Paris.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B088DSBTFK
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux (April 20, 2021)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 20, 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4190 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 231 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #318,030 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #527 in Psychological Literary Fiction
- #1,920 in Coming of Age Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #2,341 in Contemporary Literary Fiction

Customer Reviews:
3.9 94 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Maylis de Kerangal

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Maylis de Kerangal is the author of several novels in French: Je marche sous un ciel de traîne (2000), La vie voyageuse (2003), Corniche Kennedy (2008), and Naissance d’un pont (translated here as Birth of a Bridge, winner of the Franz Hessel Prize and the Médicis Prize in 2010). She has also published a collection of short stories, Ni fleurs ni couronnes (2006), and a novella, Tangente vers l’est (winner of the 2012 Landerneau Prize). In addition, she has published a fiction tribute to Kate Bush and Blondie titled Dans les rapides (2007). In 2014, her fifth novel, Réparer les vivants, was published to wide acclaim, winning the Grand Prix RTL-Lire and the Student Choice Novel of the Year from France Culture and Télérama. She lives in Paris, France.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5

94 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Caroline Fulford

a great novel about work

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2023

I could read this forever. A meticulous and worshipful view of art as work. The historical event that takes place at the end of the novel didn’t quite work for me, and the central love story feels a bit like an overwrought metaphor for painting itself, but these are hardly damning flaws to a wonderful book.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Charlotte

Endlessly boring.

Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2021

Verified Purchase

A lot of nothing for endless pages.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

kathleen g

literary fiction

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2021

Paula is a decorative artist who specializes in trompe d'oeil, which she learns at an academy in Brussels. She meets Jonas and Kate there; he becomes an object of attraction but disappears for a long stretch as Paula's career, such as it is, takes her to multiple locations. Now, she's working on reproducing the Lacscaux caves and Jonas is back in her life. This is more about art than it is about people. There are interesting details of how Paula makes her art and rumination on the subject. It is also more philosophical than plot driven and surprisingly unemotional. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Holly

Not for me

Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2021

I put together a list of books I want to read over the summer, and this one was at the top of the list. It had all the components for me - painting, Brussels, Paris, unfamiliar subject matter as well as the recommendation of someone I trust.

Unfortunately, I found it to be a bit of a slog and took me ten days to move through the 240 pages. While it should have been something that captured my attention, I found myself putting it down and not wanting to pick it back up. I can see how others would enjoy it, but I found it to be too much rumination, excessively descriptive, and I didn't really care about the characters and what happened to them. What saved it from being a 1-star read was the section written about the Lascaux Cave which I found to be fascinating.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Clawdette

tedious

Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2023

neurasthenic to the max! Great if you are having trouble falling asleep. I can't understand the rave reviews. It seems as though this kind of self-referential, slow-moving, semi-hypnotic writing is very popular now. But there is no music in the language. There is none of the rhythm of word and created mental image that can make great writing so compelling. I have an image of someone sitting at a cafe eating a handful of raisins, one by one, chewing each one 23x, staring off into space and feeling "artistic". ..dissociation is the word.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

James B

Unique artist tale

Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2021

A young woman, Paula, leaves Paris to study art in Brussels and finds that she wants to be a craftsman instead of an artist. She graduates and does work for hotels and painting movie sets in Moscow and in Italy’s famed Cinecitta Studios. At school she meets fellow painters Kate from Scotland and the very talented Jonas, who becomes her roommate during school. They push each other to do good work, but the most extraordinary part of the book as how these studies have opened up the visual word in such a micro way, so that how they now see the world is nothing less than poetry. Paula gets the ultimate job of recreating the cave paintings at Lascaux and it makes her think and rejoice about how art has transformed from these first recorded drawings to all that has come since.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Mary Katherine Kurtz

A Poetic Book

Reviewed in Canada on January 10, 2022

Verified Purchase

This book is very interesting for people interested in mural painting and specialty finishes. The heroine is one of you. The language is very descriptive and poetic. I did not really click with the heroine or the story. I enjoyed the book, but the true test is whether I keep a book or pass it on to our local used book store. This one is going to the used book store.

Buy for others

Buying and sending eBooks to others

Follow the author

Image Unavailable

Painting Time: A Novel Kindle Edition

Customers who bought this item also bought

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Product details

Videos

About the author

Maylis de Kerangal

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries