Sneed continues her subtle inquiry into the wellsprings of glimmering pop fantasies. She brought us to dream-machine Hollywood in her first novel, Little Known Facts (2013), and now takes measure of bewitching Paris. Jayne is floundering in New York, worn down by tedious jobs, a crummy apartment, and a dull boyfriend. Worst of all, she isn't painting. Enter Laurent, an older, wealthy, sexy French gallery owner, who invites Jayne to come to Paris, live in his palatial apartment, work part-time in his gallery, and paint to her heart's content. Sneed navigates a thin line between propagating and dismantling clichés as she turns this fairy-tale romance setup into an innocent-abroad plot with a Dr. Faustus dimension, a convention she also slyly subverts. As Jayne finds her stride as a woman and an artist, and Laurent reveals the origins of his hidden, complicated life, Sneed judiciously dramatizes gender expectations, the erotic imagination, the struggles of women artists, and the divide between outward appearance and inner realities. An alluring, provocative novel about the coalescence of the self and the art of living.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
Sneed's second novel (after Little Known Facts) offers a compelling view of life in Paris, despite oddly placed metaphors, lackluster love affairs, and hollow dialog. Jayne, a 30ish office worker living hand to mouth in New York, is an aspiring artist. A chance encounter at a gallery opening results in a life-changing opportunity: she is invited to live in Paris with the owner of the gallery, Laurent, with few obligations other than to create art. Readers may question the risk involved in such a move, but Jayne blithely jets off to Paris with seemingly little or no anxiety about giving up her financial autonomy. Though life is good there, she begins to doubt her new beau's fidelity. Suspense builds deliciously, but fizzles as Laurent reveals, in the first person, his mundane life story and devotion to Jayne. By this point, Jayne has rekindled an equally lukewarm romance with an ex-boyfriend who conveniently makes routine business trips to Paris. Verdict At best, Sneed offers readers a glimpse of life many dream of, but clichéd depictions of French culture and society, a protagonist who is as flat as the page, and a reserved approach to describing sex despite constant trysting means this book will appeal only to the most devoted of Francophiles.-Erin O. Romanyshyn, Frances Morrison Central Lib., Saskatoon, Sask. (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
