This book attempts to explore the line between what we believe to be true and what is really true. It is an interesting and complex question applied to a real life art hoax in 1930's Germany - a dancer turned art dealer and his many Van Gogh paintings which experts are completely divided about.

The story pulls you in, the writing is often beautiful and the sense of the importance of art to the characters is very powerful. I think my sense of the imagery and the beauty of this book was hampered by the fact that I did not get most of the references (and that I was unwilling to keep looking them up as I read). For readers who love art history, this is will be the best book you have read in years as the author carefully threads this scandal through the lives of three main characters trying to find a way to live freely in an increasingly unstable pre-WW2 Berlin.

The narratives separately are very good - I think Julius' and Emmeline's were stronger but this may be because by the time I got to Frank's I had realised I didn't care about the central mystery very much. The characters themselves are all very flawed, but I don't feel that it was ever unclear what was happening - I felt that all the 'mysterious plot points' were really not very mysterious at all. The book is well written, but overall I think I would have preferred to read this if it was written with the reader in on the mystery and with a little less cringey dialogue.

I will say that it is fantastic to see so many LGBT relationships in a novel - and unlike other reviewers I don't think this was gratuitous so much as a relatively reasonable fictionalisation of many in the social circles explored. Their relationships are mature and complex and that was great to read. The creeping fear of the Nazi's could, I feel, have been dialled up earlier in the novel, but again the author has clearly put a lot of effort into making this representative of that time.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and its rumination on falsities versus authentic art, people, politics etc. I just feel that others may connect to the heavy art focus in a way I'm not sure I could

It's really hard for me to put a rating on this book because there were parts that actually fully engaged me but one aspect that almost threw me out of the story.

I should say I mean that in the sense of the structure of the novel, not the plot. I found the plot to be, all-in-all, very enjoyable.

My main issue was with the changing of POV's. I'm not one to normally complain about this but I think anyone who goes into this knowing that there are 3 character stories told, would be incredibly surprised upon finishing the first and second stories to see who we follow in the final part of the novel.

I did like that particular character's story in the sense that it gave us a different view of Germany in the early-to-mid 1930's, however I just felt that it didn't tie in and flow as well as the first two characters stories did and if I'm honest I was hoping for another character.

In saying all of that, I really grew to like some of the characters who I initially thought I would hate, which is all thanks to Clark's ability to humanise even the most frustrating people.

And yes, I am being immensely vague by not saying character names, not because there are twists and turns but because I think people should go on their own journey's with these characters with as little foreknowledge as posible.

Definitely glad I read this and it's put me in the mood to go out and read more historical fiction!

Thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for providing me with a copy for review.

Thanks to NetGalley and to Virago for providing me an ARC copy of this novel and allowing me to participate in the blog tour for its launch. I freely chose to review it, and I’m very happy I did.
I am sure you will have noticed the beautiful cover and it might give you a hint of what the book is about. Yes, the book is about Vincent Van Gogh; well, about his art and his paintings, and the controversy that followed the sale in Germany in the 1920s of some of his paintings, which later were identified as fakes (well, perhaps, although the controversy about some of Van Gogh’s paintings, even some of the best-known ones, has carried on until the present). But that is not all.
The story is divided into three parts, all set in Berlin, each one narrated from one character’s points of view, and covering different historical periods, although all of them in the interwar era and told in chronological order. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that the author had chosen the characters as symbols and stand-ins for each particular part of that period of the history of Germany they represented. By setting the story in the 1920s and 30s, in the post-WWI Germany, we get immersed in a rapidly changing society, and one whose political developments and social unrest share more than a passing similarity with some of the things we are experiencing internationally nowadays.
The first part, set in Berlin in 1923, is told in the third-person from the point of view of Julius Köhler-Schultz. He is an art expert, collector, has written a book about Van-Gogh, and is going through a difficult divorce. But he is much more obsessed with art and preoccupied about his artworks than he is about his family. This is a time of extreme inflation, where German money is so devaluated that it is worth nothing, and the comments about it reminded me of a photograph of the period I had seen not long ago where children were playing in the streets with piles of banknotes, using them to build walls, as if they were Lego bricks. As the novel says:
“The prices were meaningless —a single match for nine hundred million marks — and they changed six times a day; no one ever had enough. At the cinema near Böhm’s office, the sign in the window of the ticket booth read: Admission –two lumps of coal.”
This section of the book establishes the story, and introduces many of the main players, not only Julius, but also Matthias, a young man Julius takes under his wing, who wants to learn about art and ends up opening his own gallery; and Emmeline, a young girl who refuses to be just a proper young lady and wants to become an artist. Julius is an intelligent man, very sharp and good at analysing what is going on around him, but blind to his emotions and those of others, and he is more of an observer than an active player. His most endearing characteristic is his love and devotion for art and artists, but he is not the most sympathetic and engaging of characters. He is self-centred and egotistical, although he becomes more humanised and humane as the story moves on.
The second part of the novel is set in Berlin in 1927, and it is told, again in the third-person, from Emmeline Eberhardt’s point of view. Although we had met her in the first part, she has now grown up and seems to be a stand-in for the Weimar Republic, for the freedom of the era, where everything seemed possible, where Berlin was full of excitement, night clubs, parties, Russian émigrés, new art movements, social change, and everything went. She is a bit lost. She wants to be an artist, but does not have confidence in herself; she manages to get a job as an illustrator in a new magazine but gets quickly bored drawing always the same; she loves women, but sometimes looks for men to fill a gap. She can’t settle and wants to do everything and live to the limit as if she knew something was around the corner, and she might not have a chance otherwise. Although she gets involved, somehow, in the mess of the fake paintings (we won’t know exactly how until much later on), this part of the story felt much more personal and immediate, at least for me. She is in turmoil, especially due to her friendship with a neighbour, Dora, who becomes obsessed with the story of the fake Van Goghs, but there are also lovely moments when Emmeline reflects on what she sees, and she truly has the eye of an artist, and she also shares very insightful observations. I loved Dora’s grandmother as well. She cannot move but she has a zest for life and plenty of stories.
“When Dora was very little her governess put a pile of books on her chair so she could reach the table but Dora refused to sit on them,’ Oma said. ‘Remember, Dodo? You thought you would squash all the people who lived inside.’”
The third part is set in Berlin in 1933 and is written in the first person, from the point of view of Frank Berszacki. He is a Jewish lawyer living in Berlin and experiences first-hand the rise to power of the Nazis. He becomes the lawyer of Emmeline’s husband, Anton, and that seems to be his link to the story, but later we discover that he was the lawyer for Matthias Rachman, the man who, supposedly, sold the fake Van Goghs, the friend of Julius. As most people who are familiar with any of the books or movies of the period know, at first most people did not believe things would get as bad as they did in Germany with Hitler’s rise to power. But things keep getting worse and worse.
“I want to know how it is possible that this is happening. It cannot go on, we have all been saying it for months, someone will stop it, and yet no one stops it and it goes on. It gets worse. April 1 and who exactly are the fools?”
His licence to practice is revoked, and although it is returned to him because he had fought for Germany in the previous war; he struggles to find any clients, and the German ones can simply choose not to settle their bills. He and his wife have experienced a terrible loss and life is already strained before the world around them becomes increasingly mad and threatening. When his brother decides to leave the country and asks him to house his daughter, Mina, for a short while, while he gets everything ready, the girl manages to shake their comfortable but numb existence and has a profound impact in their lives.
Although I loved the story from the beginning, I became more and more involved with the characters as it progressed, and I felt particularly close to the characters in part 3, partly because of the first-person narration, partly because of the evident grieving and sense of loss they were already experiencing, and partly because of their care for each other and the way the married couple kept trying to protect each other from the worst of the situation. I agree that not all of the characters are sympathetic and easy to connect with, but the beauty of the writing more than makes up for that, as does the fascinating story, which as the author explains in her note at the end, although fictionalised, is based on real events. I also loved the snippets from Van Gogh’s letters, so inspiring, and the well-described atmosphere of the Berlin of the period, which gets more and more oppressive as it goes along. I found the ending satisfying and hopeful, and I think most readers will feel the same way about it.
This is not a novel for everybody. It is literary fiction, and although it has elements of historical fiction, and also of the thriller, its rhythm is contemplative, its language is descriptive and precious, and it is not a book where every single word moves the plot forward. This is not a quick-paced page-turner. Readers who love books that move fast and are heavy on plot, rather than characters and atmosphere, might find it slow and decide nothing much happens in it. There is plenty that happens though, and I could not help but feel that the book also sounds a note of caution and warning, because it is impossible to read about some of the events, the politics, and the reactions of the populations and not make comparisons with current times. As I do sometimes, although I have shared some quotes from it already, I’d advise possible readers to check a sample of the book before making a decision about it. This is not a book for everybody. If you enjoy reading as a sensual experience, appreciate the texture and lyricism of words, and love books about art that manage to capture the feeling of it, I cannot recommend it enough. It is beautiful. This is the first book by this author I’ve read, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

This wasn't a bad book, I really enjoyed it up to the point Emmeline grow up. The first 40% of the book could have done an awesome novella, it has the troubled man trying to end a divorce, a young girl with ambition, and a young art dealer with secret ambitions. I loved that story.
Then it changes a direction. Suddenly it drops the main character, several new ones pop along. I couldn't get focused to the plot after it steered into Emmeline's adulthood.
Berlin and the love of art gave such a good background and atmosphere to the book but my problems with the plot sadly makes this an average read- 3 stars.

Thanks to Little Brown for a copy of this book.

The 1920s are tough in post-war Germany, but the show must go on and the art market flourishes despite all economic struggles. Yet, where money can be made, fraudsters aren‘t far away. Julius is a Berlin based art dealer and specialist in van Gogh; Rachmann is a young Düsseldorf art expert who is hoping to make a career in the business, too; Emmeline is a talented artist and rebel. Since the art world is a small one, their paths necessarily cross and one of the biggest frauds in art links them.

I have been a lover of novels set in the 1920s and 1930s in Berlin since this was a most inspiring and interesting time of the town. Not just big politics after the loss in the first word war and then the rise of the Nazi party, but also the culture and entertainment industries were strong and the whole world looked at the German capital. Quite logically, Clare Clark‘s novel caught my interest immediately. However, I am a bit disappointed because the book couldn‘t live up to the high expectations.

I appreciate the idea of narrating the scandal from three different perspectives and points in time. The downside of this, however, was that the three parts never really merge into one novel but somehow remain standing next to each other linked only loosely. At the beginning, I really enjoyed the discussions about art and van Gogh‘s work, but this was given up too quickly and replaced with the characters‘ lamentations and their private problems which weren‘t that interesting at all and made reading the novel quite lengthy.

This is a good read from an historical point of view. It was interesting to read about fake Van Goghs. I could not warm to the characters though and ended up finishing the book because I was interested in the history.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

I was looking forward to reading this, but, unfortunately, it was a very average, mediocre tale. What piqued my interest the most was that it is apparently based on a true story and is an amalgamation of truth and fiction. The ever-changing perspective made it difficult to get comfortable, and although I am a huge fan of lyrical prose, this was a little too flowery for me and it sadly made it rather disjointed. It is fascinating in places and with an intense interest in the art scene, I love nothing more than to enjoy a great book that takes up to that decadent world. However, it did start to come across as quite pretentious when it needn't have been.

It's a struggle to become engaged with the plot, and in some part that is down to the fact that the characters are not particularly likeable. Ms Clark could also have made more of the setting and period - Berlin, Germany in the 1930s at the time when Nazism was on the rise, but I felt this was almost an afterthought. There's no doubt that the author has meticulously researched the topic of fake Van Gogh paintings, but it is all let down by the use of too many characters making it overcomplicated. I rarely comment on cover art but it really is a beauty. I just wish I had found this more satisfying than I did.

Many thanks to Virago for an ARC.

On paper, this book is everything I should love: Berlin, the 20ies, art scene... Sadly, it simply did not work for me. The overuse of similes and metaphors, the change in perspective is confusing and despite the fact that we are in the main characters' heads all the time, we get very little information about what is actually going on.

In the Full Light of the Sun was a really ambitious novel that didn't quite work. The cover was utterly beautiful, and I wanted the book to evoke that beauty.

Whilst interesting, this book reeks of pretentiousness. With its natural basis in the German art scene, particularly with the overshadow of the upcoming war, we're taken into a story that could have easily been lifted from the plot of 'Cabaret', of individuals living in sin and adoring their quirkiness. It's just alright, really. There's a certain audience for that book, but I am not that audience.

Really wanted to like this book, but I just couldn’t get into it. Half way through and don’t care about the main character at all. Not for me this one I’m afraid!

Gorgeous cover but I found it hard to get involved in this book. It seems that novels about art nearly always hinge on questions of authenticity vs. forgery and questions of beauty vs. value: this one is no different. The background of Berlin with the rise of the Nazis is somewhat thinly-rendered, and the writing is unflashy. That this is a true story about fake Van Goghs is interesting and the story is well-researched.