Spending »

The McIntosh Professor of English at Bamard College, Mary Gordon is the author of several acclaimed novels that deal with the conflicts facing modern women, including Spending and Pearl, as well as a stirring memoir about her father, The Shadow Man.

Monica Szabo, a middle-aged, moderately successful painter, encounters B, a wealthy commodities broker who collects her work. B volunteers to be her muse, offering her everything that male artists have always had to produce great art: time, space, money, and sex.

Passionate, provocative, and highly engaging, Spending displays Gordon's maverick feminism, her extraordinary wit, and her unique perspectives on art, money, men, sex -- and the desires of women.

Entertainment Weekly

...[I]nverts the traditional male/female painter/muse dynamic.