For the past 34 years .....every August is the Palo Alto Festival of the Arts. In past years has attracted 150,000 people. Besides the art exhibitors-music - and - food - one of the biggest crowd-pleasers is the Street-Painting Expo--gorgeous murals by 'Chalk Artist'. They're extraordinary. Larger than life creations -all weekend long. This August 60 'chalk artist' will be sponsored by the Palo Alto Weekly.
I attend every year - and every year I say the same thing, "how can the city just wash away the artist's work"? "Aren't the artist's crushed"?

In Allegra Goodman's New novel, "The Chalk Artist", when Collin James creates the backdrop for theater production, the boards get washed when the show ends.
His art - wash away! We get to look at the theme 'temporary'. Given that -in life - we often like to strive towards keeping some control in our lives - there are times when we are shockingly awaken to how much control we don't have. Throughout this novel, Allegra exams the nature of the beast --- ways of looking at temporary-ness....but I would have liked 'more'. I wish this theme was explore with all the characters.

At the beginning of this story we begin to get to know Collin, a talented artist, pretty quickly. He works in a bar - Grendel's - in Cambridge- he's nice looking- flirts with the girls easily- seems comfortable in his own skin as a server, yet we know he's frustrated and lonely. He doesn't get paid a dime for the artwork he does for a community theater..... 'chalk art' which gets wash away at the end of production.
Collin has his eye on a young teacher who comes into the bar a couple times a week to grade papers.
It's only a matter of time until he gets the girl to notice him.....'viva-la-melty'.

Nina is the young - new teacher - teaching in a small diverse experimental school with no exams. It's a type of school that has a reputation for "out-of-the-box" kids: artistic, or austistic, kids with special gifts, and learning differences.
She has her eye on Collin, too.

Nina's father is the owner of "Arkadia" ...a popular video game company.
The story is predicable in ares - Collin gets a job with Nina's father.. challenges unfold.

Nina lived with her grandparents until she was 4 years old. After her grandmother got sick, she went to live with her dad. Note: this is a side story -however.....
I've read several books by Allegra Goodman, and I enjoy her 'side stories'.
her 'description treasures'. -- I actually wished for more story about the grandparents. I had a soft spot for them right away.
Here's a 'description treasure' I liked from when Nina was just a tiny tot living with her grandmother.
"Her grandparents talk to her in Russian and read Russian books. They beamed at Nina, spending all their warmth on her. Left to themselves they sat for hours without speaking. They were a pair of armored lizards; they were stone. Slowly, Nina's grandfather climbed the stairs, and slowly he descended. The stairs are carpeted dark green like moss, The walls papered with lilacs, the soaps in the bathroom carved like cabbage roses. Everything in your grandparents' house looked like something else. The boot scraper took the shape of a hedgehog, the throw pillows were embroidered cats. Even Nina's grandmother began to look like something else, the Blue Fairy in Nina's book."
LOVE the way Allegra wrote that!!!!

Twin sixteen year olds - brother and sister Aidan and Diana were close. Aidan is hooked on the video game..... obsessively hooked. Lots of descriptions of the video game -conflicts and resolutions. Other characters in Collin's apt. Building. Friends of his mother - teachers and students at the school.

I usually LOVE Allegra Goodman's books - but this was just alright. I liked it--it had moments of 'Allegra Gems' ..... but the topic the subject matter wasn't my favorite - yet.... I still enjoyed many 'parts'.

Thank You Random House Publishing, Netgalley, and Allegra Goodman

A romance story about video games that leads to obsession does sound interesting - too bad it wasn't. I had to DNF.

Parts of this book were memorable and moving, Sections dealing with Collin's art, Aidan's gaming and Nina's teaching were vivid and involving, but the relationships between characters didn't quite work for me.
I think that the book could have been shorter, cutting out some minor characters, or longer, fleshing out the character's lives. As it stands it seems caught in the middle. At the same time, the ending was satisfying if a touch pat, but where did Collin's new job come from?

This book is well written and intriguing, but unfortunately too much like Allegra Goodman's past work--these themes of science meets love, rich meets poor, advantage meets disadavantage have all been done before by Goodman in earlier, better work.