Review: The Painter From Shanghai, by Jennifer Cody Epstein

The Painter From Shanghai is the fictional tale of a real person—the post-impressionist painter Pan Yuliang. Her life was unusual; she was sold into a brothel at age 14. Rescued by Pan Zanhua, she later became his second wife, and travelled to Paris extensively to study and work. Her work was controversial and proclaimed “depraved” (one of her nude portraits was a self-portrait), and Yuliang eventually had to move to France permanently in order to continue working. The novel takes place between 1912 and the 1950s, with the bulk of the story occurring between 1912 and the 1930s.

The Painter From Shanghai, written in the present tense (which bothered me a little at first, until I became emotionally invested in the story), it is a superb, deeply-moving novel, not unlike Ellis Avery’s The Teahouse Fire or Arthur Golden’s better-known Memoirs of a Geisha. The Painter From Shanghai is an expressive novel and as beautifully written as Yuliang’s paintings are.

Also reviewed at Booking Mama, The Literate Housewife Review, She Is Too Fond Of Books, S. Krishna Books, Becky's Book Reviews, Peeking Between the Pages, A Work in Progress, Savvy Verse and Wit, So Many Precious Books, So Little Time