The Italian Teacher

An Amazon Best Book of March 2018: What if your father was one of the 20th century’s most celebrated painters: Julian Schnabel, say, or Lucian Freud? How would you define yourself against that kind of talent and machismo? In The Italian Teacher, his utterly absorbing third novel, Tom Rachman sets in play just that dynamic. Bear Bavinsky is a world-famous painter, a first-class narcissist, and father of seventeen children, whom he treats with careless, sometimes callous, warmth. Bear’s shy son Pinch loves to paint, but his ambitions are snuffed by his father’s offhand critique: “I got to tell you, kiddo. You’re not an artist and you never will be.” After that, nothing in Pinch’s life seems to gel -- until after Bear’s death, when Pinch’s role as caretaker of his father’s legacy grants him scope to come into his own. Ironies abound.

As with Rachman’s 2010 newsroom novel The Imperfectionists, it’s a testament to the credibility of the narrative that you feel he may be writing about real people, thinly disguised as fiction. But in The Italian Teacher, Rachman is a more likeable storyteller: his social satire seems more thoroughly tempered by sympathy and a longer perspective. Lately, a number of excellent novels have focused on the impact of a single painting (The Goldfinch; The Painted Kiss; The Fortunate Ones, to name a few). The Italian Teacher looks at art with a less reverential slant, and asks intriguing questions, along the way, about the costs, and value, of the artistic life. If you enjoyed William Boyd’s Any Human Heart, you’ll love Rachman’s portrait of Pinch, who has the good luck to both outlive and survive his famous father, and to find, in the end, a way to take ownership of his difficult legacy. —Sarah Harrison Smith, Amazon Book Review