A valiant attempt to root art in a sense of place that succeeds in its aim but largely loses the reader in the process.

As someone with a background in contextual Art History, I’m always interested in how location and setting inform creation, whether that is about why a piece was created, how it was created, or even what literally ends up making up the piece materially.

The author works hard here to demonstrate how much Coenties Slip informed the work of the artists who lived there, and while she succeeds in doing so, it’s a clunky and slow-moving journey to get there. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it will make for good reading, and while I applaud the theory and research that made all of this true, the narrative didn’t make for a particularly good book.

I would be far more likely to cite something like this than read it for pleasure, which is a compliment to the author’s art historical chops, but perhaps not so much one for her role as an author of narrative nonfiction.

This was an entertaining and informative read. I found myself sharing what I learned from this book with those around me. I recommend it to fans of good and highly readable non-fiction.