The plotting and pacing on this one didn't completely hang together for me, but I'm one of a small number of readers who really likes having a cast of imperfect characters, and there were plenty of flaws in this cast.

Our protagonist is Charles, son of Bear and Natalie. Bear is an American artist of some renown who paints parts of bodies. He is the kind of famous person you read about in the National Enquirer: charismatic, narcissistic, and constantly seducing women (and making plenty of children along the way). Natalie is the opposite (yes, opposites attract) by nature; sensitive, fragile, and guileless. Charles, also known as Pinch, wants nothing more than his father's affections which dangle tantalizingly out of reach. When Bear leaves Natalie, the yearnings only grow.

The novel follows Charles from the age of five until his death and how this pursuit of his father's love really impacts every aspect of his life - career, love, all of it.

For me, the highlight of the book was watching the main character struggle to find his place in the world in the shadow of this famous, bigger than life father and how the parental relationship impacted his entire life. Charles finally does grab some agency of his own life in a most unexpected way (and for me, not necessarily the most believable, but entertaining). ( )

“He supposes that this is how culture works: The taste-makers call something important until it becomes so, making themselves important in the process.”

Character-driven novel about the life of Charles “Pinch” Bavinsky, son of famous American artist Bear Bavinsky. The story starts in Italy in the 1950s, where Bear and Pinch’s mother, Natalie, are living an artist’s unconventional lifestyle. Natalie is an artist in her own right, specializing in pottery. Bear is a larger-than-life presence in his son’s life, an acclaimed genius of the art world, but unfortunately, he is a despicable person. Everything is about what Bear wants and his family suffers from neglect. He collects lovers and wives and has many children but none of them gain any foothold in his attentions, except for his son Pinch. Pinch is devoted to his father and does everything in his power to gain his favor. Bear throws him crumbs and can be extremely cruel, telling his son he has no artistic talent, which we find out later is not true.

Bear appears in Pinch’s life, wreaks havoc on his psyche, then disappears for long periods of time. His father intentionally damages his romantic relationship with a young woman, and Pinch carries a torch for her for years. The story follows Pinch’s life as he moves around the world, featuring stints in Rome, Toronto, London, and a cabin in France.

Pinch’s life includes all the expected phases in an ordinary life, while exploring themes of truth, beauty, and the intricacies of a father-son relationship. The characters in this novel are very well drawn, including the secondary characters that take center stage toward the end. Rachman has definitely done his homework regarding the creation of oil paintings. Unlike some other novels I have read, this one is extremely realistic.

This book is a combination of many of my favorite elements – a deep character study, a book about the art world, and a protagonist that eventually triumphs. I really enjoyed this one!
( )

Really did not enjoy. Happy to get to the end. Audio. ( )

In the Shadow of a Giant

If you have ever wondered what living in the shadow of a famous, prolific, egotistical, self-absorbed, peripatetic father would be like, Tom Rachman’s The Italian Teacher will convince you that it is unenviable. Better to be the giant senior, because the junior, at least giant Bear Bavinsky’s son Pinch, can whither. At least, that is, until self-discovery in the form of a tamped ambition, springs to life, leaving you to wonder if it’s satisfying private accomplishment, or maybe quiet revenge.

The Italian Teacher follows Charles “Pinch” Bavinsky through phases of his life, from small child living with his mother Natalie in Rome and London, to his young adult college student days in Toronto, through his middle and later years in London, interspersed with trips to his artist father Bear’s cottage in the south of France on the border with Spain. Pinch, as he is known to his father and mother, Charles to everybody else, grows up the son of a famous mid-20th century artist. Bear Bavinsky seems like a wonderful father at first, at least when he is around, which isn’t often. When Pinch and mom Natalie live in Rome, Bear blows into town for a few months, and when there sequesters himself in his studio to work. It’s his pattern throughout his life.

Bear works constantly, churning out one Life-Still (essentially a closeup study of body parts that through his genius capture and say more about a subject than a portrait or full body painting). Of this production, he destroys most, burning them in a barrel he keeps by each of his studios. The reason’s artistic: Bear tries to capture perfectly on canvas what he pictures in his mind, and as any painter, sculptor, writer, as any creator will tell you, that can add up to a world of frustration, or ecstasy when you achieve it. Naturally, there’s a more cynical, economic reason at work here: limiting supply to increase the preciousness of each piece. This here is another aspect of Rachman’s novel, in addition to the act of creating, the workings of the investment art world.

Pinch, with the encouragement of Natalie, herself a potterer with unfulfilled ambitions, tries his hand at painting. She praises and sees potential in his work. When, after years of dogged practice, he visits and shows a sample to father Bear, the elder tells his son in blunt fashion to find another line of work. It’s offhanded and the more devastating for it.

Pinch then pursues art history at the University of Toronto, where he meets the one woman he will love, Barrows. They carry on as a couple, even visiting Bear at the cottage in the south of France. But the relationship doesn’t last. Each moves on, with Barrows achieving the successful art historian career Pinch desired. Pinch does establish a long-lasting, though distant, relationship with Marsden, a gay wild child, disowned by his well-off family.

Pinch moves to London where he wanders into a job as an Italian teacher in the employ of Utz. He has an interest and facility with languages that he finds fulfilling. He marries, divorces, lives platonically with another language teacher, and proceeds to lead a meager life.

Yet, through all the ups and many downs of his life, he maintains a fierce loyalty to his father. And Bear reciprocates. Of his seventeen children fathered over innumerable marriages, Pinch is the favorite. Upon Bear’s death, the execution and administration of Bear’s estate and his body of work unreleased and hidden in the cottage becomes Pinch’s responsibility. Yet, loyal as he is, Pinch harbors an ambition that resurfaces one day at the cottage, long before Bear dies, but with far reaching consequences into the future, beyond Bear’s life, and beyond Pinch’s too.

Rachman creates a living breathing world that live on the pages of The Italian Teacher. The characters, especially Bear, Pinch, and Natalie have features you will like and those you will find off-putting. As created by Rachman so expertly, they feel like people who have really lived. More than art, it’s a novel about fathers and sons, about growing up, about falling short of your ambitions; it’s about relationships and life, no strong interest in art required to enjoy it. ( )

In the Shadow of a Giant

If you have ever wondered what living in the shadow of a famous, prolific, egotistical, self-absorbed, peripatetic father would be like, Tom Rachman’s The Italian Teacher will convince you that it is unenviable. Better to be the giant senior, because the junior, at least giant Bear Bavinsky’s son Pinch, can whither. At least, that is, until self-discovery in the form of a tamped ambition, springs to life, leaving you to wonder if it’s satisfying private accomplishment, or maybe quiet revenge.

The Italian Teacher follows Charles “Pinch” Bavinsky through phases of his life, from small child living with his mother Natalie in Rome and London, to his young adult college student days in Toronto, through his middle and later years in London, interspersed with trips to his artist father Bear’s cottage in the south of France on the border with Spain. Pinch, as he is known to his father and mother, Charles to everybody else, grows up the son of a famous mid-20th century artist. Bear Bavinsky seems like a wonderful father at first, at least when he is around, which isn’t often. When Pinch and mom Natalie live in Rome, Bear blows into town for a few months, and when there sequesters himself in his studio to work. It’s his pattern throughout his life.

Bear works constantly, churning out one Life-Still (essentially a closeup study of body parts that through his genius capture and say more about a subject than a portrait or full body painting). Of this production, he destroys most, burning them in a barrel he keeps by each of his studios. The reason’s artistic: Bear tries to capture perfectly on canvas what he pictures in his mind, and as any painter, sculptor, writer, as any creator will tell you, that can add up to a world of frustration, or ecstasy when you achieve it. Naturally, there’s a more cynical, economic reason at work here: limiting supply to increase the preciousness of each piece. This here is another aspect of Rachman’s novel, in addition to the act of creating, the workings of the investment art world.

Pinch, with the encouragement of Natalie, herself a potterer with unfulfilled ambitions, tries his hand at painting. She praises and sees potential in his work. When, after years of dogged practice, he visits and shows a sample to father Bear, the elder tells his son in blunt fashion to find another line of work. It’s offhanded and the more devastating for it.

Pinch then pursues art history at the University of Toronto, where he meets the one woman he will love, Barrows. They carry on as a couple, even visiting Bear at the cottage in the south of France. But the relationship doesn’t last. Each moves on, with Barrows achieving the successful art historian career Pinch desired. Pinch does establish a long-lasting, though distant, relationship with Marsden, a gay wild child, disowned by his well-off family.

Pinch moves to London where he wanders into a job as an Italian teacher in the employ of Utz. He has an interest and facility with languages that he finds fulfilling. He marries, divorces, lives platonically with another language teacher, and proceeds to lead a meager life.

Yet, through all the ups and many downs of his life, he maintains a fierce loyalty to his father. And Bear reciprocates. Of his seventeen children fathered over innumerable marriages, Pinch is the favorite. Upon Bear’s death, the execution and administration of Bear’s estate and his body of work unreleased and hidden in the cottage becomes Pinch’s responsibility. Yet, loyal as he is, Pinch harbors an ambition that resurfaces one day at the cottage, long before Bear dies, but with far reaching consequences into the future, beyond Bear’s life, and beyond Pinch’s too.

Rachman creates a living breathing world that live on the pages of The Italian Teacher. The characters, especially Bear, Pinch, and Natalie have features you will like and those you will find off-putting. As created by Rachman so expertly, they feel like people who have really lived. More than art, it’s a novel about fathers and sons, about growing up, about falling short of your ambitions; it’s about relationships and life, no strong interest in art required to enjoy it. ( )