“What a delight to read work that so fully captures the ache-inducing quality of art and desire. Sirens & Muses is a novel that reveals the complications that arise when people allow themselves to become vulnerable to their work and subsequently open themselves to heartbreak. It is a deeply relatable and profoundly enjoyable read, one drenched in prismatic color and light. Sirens & Muses is a beautiful book, and Antonia Angress is an undeniable star.”—Kristen Arnett, bestselling author of With Teeth

“At first, Antonia Angress’s brilliant Sirens & Muses seems to be about art and the artists who create it, but its true subject is the power that art has over us and that artists have over one another. And then there’s the power of those who own the galleries, and those who purchase the art. This narrative is intricate, moving, and often funny, and its scenes are beautifully crafted. A wonderful book.”—Charles Baxter, award-winning author of The Sun Collective

“Some debut novels are beautiful, some are funny, some are emotionally satisfying, and some are rich in plot twists and vividly original characters. Sirens and Muses checks all the boxes. Antonia Angress is so talented, and her depiction of young artists—with their egos and inspirations and ambitions—is unforgettably impressive. Read. This. Book.”—Julie Schumacher, author of Dear Committee Members and The Shakespeare Requirement

“Sirens & Muses captivated me with its well-drawn, complex characters and vivid descriptions and settings. I loved the art school setting and was totally smitten with the characters of Louisa and Karina. Antonia Angress is a keen observer of relationships, and this is a gorgeously rich and thoughtful novel.”—Annie Hartnett, author of Rabbit Cake and Unlikely Animals

“With gorgeous prose and a satirist’s wit, Antonia Angress explores provocative questions about the ethics and economics of the contemporary art world, and the people who struggle to find their place in it. Sirens & Muses features characters as flawed as they are talented, full of desire, ambition, and aching regret. Their journeys engrossed me till the very last page.”—Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
 
“Powerful, elegant, and mesmerizing, Sirens & Muses reimagines ambition, passion, identity, and the intricate bonds between women. Antonia Angress is a writer to watch.”—Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of The Revisioners

“Sirens & Muses is a page-turning, sexy, witty dive into making art and the art world and just how great the chasm is that lies in-between.”—Joanna Hershon, author of St. Ivo

Autorentext
Antonia Angress was born in Los Angeles and raised in San José, Costa Rica. She is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Minnesota MFA program, where she was a Winifred Fiction Fellow and a College of Liberal Arts Fellow. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, the artist Connor McManus. Sirens & Muses is her first novel.

Klappentext

**Four artists are drawn into a web of rivalry and desire at an elite art school and on the streets of New York in this “gripping, provocative, and supremely entertaining” (BuzzFeed) debut

“Captures the ache-inducing quality of art and desire . . . a deeply relatable and profoundly enjoyable read, one drenched in prismatic color and light.”—Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of With Teeth**
 
FINALIST FOR THE MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Glamour, PopSugar, Debutiful
 
It’s 2011: America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarefied bubble. Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. Complicating matters is Louisa’s unexpected attraction to her charismatic roommate, Karina Piontek, the preternaturally gifted but mercurial daughter of wealthy art collectors. Gradually, Louisa and Karina are drawn into an intense sensual and artistic relationship, one that forces them to confront their deepest desires and fears. But Karina also can’t shake her fascination with Preston Utley, a senior and anti-capitalist Internet provocateur, who is publicly feuding with visiting professor and political painter Robert Berger—a once-controversial figurehead seeking to regain relevance.   
  
When Preston concocts an explosive hoax, the fates of all four artists are upended as each is unexpectedly thrust into the cutthroat New York art world. Now all must struggle to find new identities in art, in society, and among each other. In the process, they must find either their most authentic terms of life—of success, failure, and joy—or risk losing themselves altogether. 

With a canny, critical eye, Sirens & Muses overturns notions of class, money, art, youth, and a generation’s fight to own their future.

Leseprobe
**Part One

Chapter One**

Louisa’s first assignment at Wrynn College of Art was paint home. She’d left home twelve days ago, and now, as she looked out the classroom window, it startled her still to see hills and sullen, huddled townhouses, the New England sky close and cold, nothing like at home, where the sky overwhelmed the land, a drama of clouds and rain and strange shafts of tawny light.

She’d never been on her own before. Her year at South Louisiana Community College didn’t count. She had slept in her old bedroom, borrowed her mother’s car to get to class, worked the same shifts at Chez Jacqueline, eaten Sunday dinner at Grandma and Pepere’s.

Louisa was homesick. It was normal, she told herself. Even at nineteen-almost-twenty, it was normal. And so, alone in her studio, she’d cried a little as she painted Lake Martin at dusk, bald cypresses echoed by their dark reflections in the water. It was a placid scene, but ominous, tinged with danger, curdled at the edges like a faded bruise. In the background, low, swollen clouds gleamed with uncanny clarity and a flutter of pintails took off over the marsh. In the foreground, an ibis waded in the shallows, its bow-shaped beak slicing through the water. Its plumage was a soft, unglossed white, except for its black wingtips. Its pearly blue eye met the viewer’s.

She’d chosen an ibis because Grandma had once told her that it symbolized resilience; it was the last animal to take shelter before a hurricane, and the first to reappear after the storm.

“No, not resilience,” Mom had said, overhearing. “Regeneration. And wisdom.”

Danger, Louisa thought. Optimism.

“Dinner,” Pepere added. Hunting ibises was illegal, but he’d grown up shooting them for the table and occasionally still brought one home. The meat was orange and fishy.

Now, a thousand miles away from him, Louisa stood alone in an empty classroom. She’d arrived early to secure a spot on the southern wall, and she was pleased with how her painting looked there, bathed in that diffuse northern light, what Mom called painterly light. One window was cracked to let in a breeze, but the room still smelled sharply of oils and turpentine. Afternoon sun gilded the floorboards. As Louisa’s classmates arrived and hung their wo…