Utopia
by Heidi Sopinka
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Pub Date 11 Aug 2022 | Archive Date 29 Jul 2022
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Description
It’s okay for men to make bad art. There’s no price on their head for doing it … Nothing for men is pre-determined, except their chance at great success.
When Romy, a gifted young artist in the male-dominated art scene of 1970s California, dies in suspicious circumstances, it is not long before her husband Billy finds a replacement.
Paz, fresh out of art school in New York, returns to California to take her place. But she is haunted by Romy, who is everywhere: in the photos and notebooks and art strewn around the house, and in the eyes of the baby she left behind, the baby Paz is now mother to.
Then, strange things begin to happen. Photographs move, noises reverberate through the house, people start to question what really happened the night Romy died, and then a postcard in her handwriting arrives.
Advance Praise
‘Utopia is a marvel. Vividly beguiling on art, love, and what it means to be alive, every page thrums with magic.’ – Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure
‘Utopia is a bird’s eye view of the desires of the human heart ... through characters who feel and live deeply at the boundaries of art and life. Sopinka’s luminescent prose tackles the danger and vitality of artistic and bodily desire under the politically charged structures of masculine power ... with rawness, deep awareness, and razor-sharp critique ... This is an urgent book.’ – Angélique Lalonde, author of Glorious Frazzled Beings
‘These brilliant and bold artists explode off the page as they try to transcend the boundaries of the material world in their work. But the most dangerous waters they must navigate are those of the male-dominated world of the 1970s, which erases their art and identities. Sopinka explores the minefield that is loving men in an oppressively patriarchal world. And she captures the volatility and power of female friendships, and the uncharted maps of women’s untameable artistic drives.’ – Heather O’Neill, author of When We Lost Our Heads
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781913348533 |
| PRICE | £14.99 (GBP) |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Roman C, Reviewer
Books about women and art are like catnip to me so this was always going to be a winner. Sopinka takes an informed and sophisticated view of the way art is both commodified in capitalist terms and how the systems and structures associated with it are acutely gendered from the way male artists are frequently allowed to be disembodied, to the way that gallery biographies include women's family and domestic backgrounds but rarely those of men.
Set in LA in the 1970s, this is a re-writing of 'Rebecca', referenced in the text, as Paz is obsessed with her husband's first wife, the artist Romy. Paz isn't nearly as interesting as Romy which, I'm assuming, is deliberately echoing the unnamed second wife of Du Maurier's classic but, luckily, she has interesting artistic friends and access to Romy's diaries, fascinating documents that are almost an artistic manifesto in their own right.
This isn't in any sense a mystery, though there is the question of what happened to Romy. Set at the time when female artists are reading Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto, there are questions about the constraints under which creative women are tethered - and Sopinka comes up with a surprising epilogue to tackle the issue of gendered (in)visibility that is threaded through the text.
A quick read but an engaging an intelligent one.
Aria H, Reviewer
This was an enjoyable read that was well written and had an engaging storyline and well developed characters, however this is a three star read for me as I expected a big mystery to be the forefront of the novel but it wasn't so I was disappointed.
Katie R, Reviewer
Well, this was really great. I loved the riff on Rebecca, that it was acknowledged within the book quite obviously and then how it eventually went far beyond that initial idea.
I am drawn to novels about artists and what makes them tick, the strangeness of their lives, and their often free boundaries between friendship, sex, love and while definitely not for me, I even find their willingness to seek alternate states of being with booze and drugs to be interesting. Performance art is something I don't know much about, but I enjoyed learning a little more here.
This novel absolutely blazes with the fire of sun-soaked California deserts, prose that is so finely wrought there are entire pages that could be highlighted, and ultimately a lot of questions that the author doesn't entirely answer. What does is mean to be haunted by the shadow of your own potential? How is that changed when you're a woman trying to survive in a man's world? How does that shift again with motherhood? What is the cost of owning your own story?
This is definitely an author to watch.
My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
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