THE ART OF VANISHING

This love affair starts with a meet-cute at a museum, then slips the tiresome restraints of reality altogether.

“She was Elizabeth Bennet in a janitorial uniform and I, Fitzwilliam Darcy in oil on canvas”: This seemingly outlandish assertion summarizes the premise of Pager’s debut. We are being addressed by Jean Matisse, who lives with two of his siblings and his mom in a painting by his father, Henri. The “Elizabeth Bennet” in question is Claire, a new night-shift cleaning person at a private museum seemingly modeled on the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, where hundreds of paintings are hung edge to edge in a giant mansion. Ever since she was a little girl, Claire's had the feeling that there’s a way to cross over into the world of a painted image, and she’s about to find out she’s right. Later, after the pair has fallen in love: “We played cards with Cézanne’s farmhands, shot the breeze with Seurat’s models, and swam in the Medi­terranean Sea.” As the subjects of the paintings skip from one canvas to the next to get some variety in their frozen lives, one of the most popular hangouts is “Le bonheur de vivre,” a Matisse which depicts a clothing-optional seaside bacchanal. This escapist adventure and beautiful love affair is deeply satisfying, almost therapeutic, for young Claire, who has a lot of responsibilities and complications in the real world. At one point, she starts to realize she could be missing important calls while she’s over there in La La Land. “Of course there’s no cell reception in—what year is it in this paint­ing?” “1905 or 1906, I think.”  In addition to the details of Claire’s backstory, Pager throws two big real-world developments into the mix—Covid-19 and a museum heist. But the real joy of this book is the world she has invented on the other side of the canvas, a kind of Phantom Tollbooth for grown-ups.

Whimsical and beguiling.