The caricaturist

In late nineteenth-century Philadelphia, the Spanish-American war looms, and protests abound. Oliver Fischer is a fledgling artist, layabout, libertine, and "scapegrace," content to while away the hours consorting with scandalous women and consuming too many libations. Ollie's most recent infraction resulted in his being kicked out of school for illicit behavior and cut off by his banker father. In need of work, Ollie uses his former teacher, painter Thomas Eakins, as a reference to land a gig as an illustrator at an advertising agency, where he meets his smart and spirited coworker Iris and is then sent to Key West with Stephen Crane. Lock (The Ice Harp, 2023) again demonstrates his uncanny ability to inhabit the voices of historical figures. Lock is no mere ventriloquist, however, turning out such poignant lines as, "our lives are suspended by a thread between radiance and annihilation, waiting for the scissors" and "What is art if not a carapace to protect the hypertrophic organ of human sensibility?" Lock has stated that "Hyperbole is the dominant mode in my novel," yet he is our most assured portraitist.

The uneven 11th entry in Lock's American Novels series (after The Ice Harp) opens as the lucrative sugar trade draws the U.S. into Cuba's battle for independence from Spain. It's 1897 and aspiring artist Oliver Fischer, a student at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, attempts to create a photographic replica of Manet's Le Déjeuner sur L'herbe, a scandalous depiction of nude women and clothed men sitting outdoors, for his final project. He stages the scene in what he thinks is a secluded rural location but one of his naked models, fleeing a wasp, interrupts a riverside baptism. Newspaper reports of the incident get Oliver expelled from the academy and disinherited by his banker father, and he winds his way into a caricaturist job at a newspaper just before America declares war on Spain. Oliver is then sent to Key West to illustrate the run-up to the invasion, where he has a brief encounter with reporter Stephen Crane. Lock successfully mimics Crane's impressionistic style in his marvelous depictions of late 19th-century America, but Oliver's aimlessness makes for a disjointed narrative. Lock has made better use of his strengths in previous installments. (July)

An illustrator seeks his fortune on the eve of the Spanish-American War. Though it opens in 1897, Lock's new novel feels very relevant in 2024. The narrator, Oliver Fischer, is 20 when the book begins. He's studying art, to the frustration of his wealthy, bigoted father, who urges him to take up a career in banking instead. Much of Oliver's time is spent discussing politics and thinking about the nature of art. Painter Thomas Eakins--one of Oliver's instructors--instructs him to read Stephen Crane's article "An Experiment in Misery," an account of living hand to mouth. It's at this point that Oliver's life begins to draw closer to Crane's, with the two men eventually crossing paths in Key West. The story of a young man's discovery of what is and is not important to him is well handled here, and Lock offers reminders of the more unseemly aspects of this society, from Oliver's father's bigotry to a racist attack on a Chinese restaurant. The novel's description of the unlikely alliances at work in the anti-imperialist movement are intriguing--but it's Oliver's voice and the lyricism of his observations that make this novel especially strong. Here's Oliver exploring a collection of swallowed jacks in the Chevalier Jackson Foreign Body Collection at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum: "Their number testified to the popularity of the schoolyard game and to the appetite of children for the inedible." Oliver is a wry narrator; he observes that, as tension between the United States and Spain escalates, "the temperature of the nation's war fever could be told by the number of exclamation marks" in newspaper headlines. In the end, it's a book haunted by Crane's literary work and his legacy--to say nothing of the man himself. A resonant story of art, rebellion, and politics. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.