Review: The Painting

The Painting by Alison Booth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


ARC received in exchange for an Honest Review
Thank you to Red Door Press and NetGalley!

"Once you crossed the ocean you were always on the wrong side. That was lot of the immigrant, belonging everywhere but nowhere"

The Painting by Australian novelist, Alison Booth is a novel set in 1989, the same year the Iron Curtain was broken and the Berlin Wall was taken down on live television. Anika Molnar has fled her native Budapest and in the changing times, she wonders if she will ever see her family again. Luckily for her, she is not alone. Anika lives with her aunt that fled Hungary after the Revolution of 1956 that took the life of her husband, Anika's uncle. The only thing these two women have to remind them of him is a painting that Anika took with her from Budapest. Until the painting goes missing. Until more people heard about it. Until several men are around Anika inquiring on the precedence of such an expensive painting coming from Budapest under the communist regime when no paintings could have been bought in a legal way. That is when Anika starts looking back, asking her always secretive family to remember the horrors of war and occupation under Germans and Russians.

Honestly, The Painting is a novel about family, war, immigration, and how to move forward after living vigilant and guarded your whole life. The painting is an excuse to take you in these themes, but for me, what I valued the most about this novel was that it showed me how little I knew about Hungary and the extent of communism in other countries. Historical fiction often focuses only on Germany and France when exploring these years of pain, but Alison Booth presents us with a fresh take, focusing on Hungary and Australia, both left to the side, but that formed part of the story that for some reason, we are always trying to reduce. 1989, that is not that far away. 1989 was 32 years ago. There are men and women in their 30's that probably have parents living with war trauma in Budapest, and I think it is disrespectful that more books don't address them as victims as much as we do with other countries. I am thankful Booth is remembering and honoring them while teaching people like me about the history of Hungary and the brave lives that were taken. For that, I think this novel should be read and incite you to read more about the topic.


*SPOILER
However, I found the beginning kinda slow and the mystery of who took the painting kinda unnecessary to the end. As I said, the painting is just an excuse for Anika to be pushed into investigating her family and the truth, so there was no need to be brought back at the end.
*END OF SPOILER

The writing style is a little bit repetitive and slow at the beginning for my taste (the painting takes forever to be stolen for example) but once we are taken to Budapest, I was enchanted with the story and the way Booth portrayed the trauma that the characters lived with, and the pain memories caused them.
Moreover, my copy had several typing mistakes (nothing too scandalous, but that I hope the end result will not have) and often felt repetitive due to some expressions that were overused in my opinion. This is all personal opinion of course, and I don't know if the published novel will have these issues.

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