Claude and Camille: A Novel of Claude Monet »

Stephanie Cowell is the critically acclaimed author of the historical novels Nicholas Cooke, The Players: A Novel of the Young Shakespeare, and The Physician of London (winner of a 1996 American Book Award). Trained as a lyric coloratura soprano, she lives with her husband in New York City.

Sometimes he dreamt he held her; that he would turn in bed and she would be there. But she was gone and he was old. Nearly seventy. Only cool paint met his fingers. "Ma très chère . . ." Darkness started to fall, dimming the paintings. He felt the crumpled letter in his pocket. "I loved you so," he said. "I never would have had it turn out as it did. You were with all of us when we began, you gave us courage. These gardens at Giverny are for you but I'm old and you're forever young and will never see them. . . ."

In the mid-nineteenth century, a young man named Claude Monet decided that he would rather endure a difficult life painting landscapes than take over his father's nautical supplies business in a French seaside town. Against his father's will, and with nothing but a dream and an insatiable urge to create a new style of art that repudiated the Classical Realism of the time, he set off for Paris.

But once there he is confronted...

The New York Times - Jan Stuart

Historic verisimilitude cuddles with bodice-ripping fancy in this diverting fictional representation of the Impressionist maverick Claude Monet and his first wife…