The Last Leonardo by Ben Lewis

Apparently, I'm into art now. Walter Isaacson's biography of Leonardo da Vinci - the starting point of that interest - is full of the things that typically bug me about the art world: attempts to put more meaning into pieces than they warrant and mystifying the artist to make their work seem larger than life. However, Isaacson, together with two excellent podcast episodes by Malcolm Gladwell (Dragon Psychology 101 and Hedwig's Lost Van Gogh), succeeded in rousing my interest in the art world and its calculated strangeness. Did you know that much of the world's renaissance art is stowed away in airport warehouses (especially in Switzerland) and used to avoid taxes? Also, did you know that the most expensive painting ever sold, the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci, is probably not by the master himself and even if it was, it barely retains any of its original paint?

The Last Leonardo, by art insider Ben Lewis, dives head first into the latter question. The Salvator Mundi, sold to Mohammed Bin Salman, the Saudi Prince, for a staggering 450 million Euros in 2017, is a portrait of Christ as the saviour of the world. It was "discovered" at a minor auction by two experienced art dealers, who, according to the very extensive legend that already surrounds the painting, could clearly see that beside the obvious overpainting and damage, the piece had an inexplicable charm. They paid around one thousand euros for it in 2005. After extensive efforts to clean and restore the painting, it first sold to a Russian oligarch looking to hide money from an impending divorce settlement and later to the aforementioned Saudis albeit, even then, under mysterious circumstances. As of today, its whereabouts are uncertain.

Lewis tracks the painting from its supposed creation through the centuries. There are possible clues throughout the ages as a "picture of Christ by Leonardo" is catalogued to be in the possession of Charles II, king of England in the 17th century. But, as Lewis deftly shows, art attribution was even more troubled then than it is now. Overzealous dealers tended to attribute studio works to masters and sometimes repair damaged works with less than impressive results. In the same vein, Lewis picks apart much of the evidence that supports the Salvator Mundi's attribution to Leonardo. As he peels back the curtain, there is very little definitively shows it to be an original.

The question remains. What exactly is the Salvator Mundi if not an original Leonardo? According to Lewis, it is a studio piece - a collaborative project by Leonardo's pupils - based on Leonardo's design and, possibly, with some input from the master himself. We know that Leonardo must have been involved in the project, since many of his students have painted versions of the Salvator Mundi and there are a few sketches of it in his notebooks. However, the attempt to elevate the painting to the level of an autograph work seems wishful if not disingenuous.

The Last Leonardo makes for the perfect companion piece to Isaacson's look into da Vinci's whole life. Lewis had unprecedented access to all parties involved, with the obvious exception of the Saudis, including Yves Bouvier, the flamboyant ex-art dealer to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, and the oligarch himself. It's the story of the art market, in its current incarnation, as much as it is the story of the Salvator Mundi. I could go on, there is so much to say about all of these topics - are other Leonardo's misattributed? - but I'll let Lewis be the guide. The Last Leonardo is the quintessential guide to high art today; impressive, well researched and full of intrigue.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Psychologists and sociologists, philosophers and other clever people have come up with hundreds of theories about how people interact, how they fall in love and how they decide who to stick with. Somewhere outside the edges of those theories is what you might call chemistry. It's not always possible to explain away why we love who we love and why we reject someone who might be a perfect match.  Some of the elements are obvious and some are not. Sometimes, an inexplicable force ties you to another person without really showing you why. Normal People taps into that force in an intriguing and perceptive way.

Normal People follows Connell and Marianne from high school to College in Ireland, as they hook up, quarrel, drift apart, drift back together and so on. Connell is athletic, handsome and popular, but harbours a secret love for literature. Marianne, born into wealth, is coquettish but prone to traveling the darker alleys of her mind. Their story is relatable and believable in a way that few novels are. Connell struggles to understand how he feels about Marianne - very much something that young adult men go through - and ends up hurting her. They learn about each other and grow up together and realise that their chemistry is something they only share with each other.

Rooney does a lot with very little. Normal People is positively brief, especially compared to other stories of teenagers growing up (don't drop Paul Auster's 4 3 2 1 on your foot). Chapters skip forward in time, offering the reader glimpses of the characters' lives. Rooney knows her craft and offers just enough clues for the reader. For example, Connell's missing father gets barely a nod, even though he might be blamed for many of the son's mistakes. It works brilliantly but for a few passages. Marianne's brother, who bullies and torments Marianne, is given so little time on the page that his actions mostly left me confused. Here a longer format might have helped. 

So what exactly is Normal People? In one corner of the Internet, critics dismiss it as just another piece of "chic-lit"; naive books for young women in the style of Jojo Moyes and other bookstore top 10 staples. Normal People does share many of the genre's tropes. Connell is drawn to literature (can't writers imagine any other profession than their own?), is a top student at Trinity College and is invited to continue his studies in New York. New York as a metaphor for success is as vanilla as it gets. Paris is the city of love, Spanish is the language of lust and New York is the aspiring artist's inevitable destination. Some have mentioned Normal People as a generation defining love story. It obviously isn't. My generation (I'm very much the same age as the protagonists) doesn't care about high literature or write long emails to friends during summer vacations. We browse Instagram, not The Communist Manifesto, miscommunicate over texts and live in a constant state of FOMO (fear of missing out).

Nine times out of ten, the story ends there. A bestselling will-they-or-won't-they isn't a likely place to find graceful storytelling. Yet, there is an inexplicable allure to Normal People. We watched the TV series with my wife, which led to several deep discussions about our relationship and how we'd met. On several occasions, I thought about Normal People before going to bed. There are stylistic and thematic similarities with Hemingway's A Sun Also Rises; the sparseness of the storytelling, the frail inner life of the characters and the uncertain ending. And as with Hemingway, and human chemistry itself, part of Normal People's allure is physical and best left unexplained.