The Prize, Jill Bialosky
The Prize, Jill Bialosky
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The Prize
A Novel

Author: Jill Bialosky

Narrator: Tom Taylorson

Unabridged: 9 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/15/2015

Synopsis

What do we prize most? Are integrity and ambition mutually exclusive, as we seek a place in the world? How do we ultimately value a piece of art—or a life? These are the questions at the core of the evocative new novel by bestselling author Jill Bialosky.Edward Darby has everything a man could hope for: meaningful work, a loving wife, and a beloved daughter. With a rising career as a partner at an esteemed gallery, he strives not to let ambition, money, power, and his dark past corrode the sanctuary of his domestic and private life. Influenced by his father, a brilliant Romantics scholar, Edward has always been more of a purist than an opportunist. But when a celebrated artist controlled by her insecurities betrays him—and another very different artist awakens his heart and stirs up secrets from his past—Edward will find himself unmoored from his marriage, his work, and the memory of his beloved father. And when the finalists of an important prize are announced, creating desperate maneuvering among artists seeking validation, Edward soon learns that betrayal comes in many forms, and he may be hurtling toward an act that challenges his own notions about what comprises a life worth living.A compelling odyssey of a man unhinged by his ideals, The Prize is also an unflinching portrait of a marriage struggling against the corroding tide of time and the proximity to the treacherous fault line between art and money.

About Jill Bialosky

Jill Bialosky is the author of six acclaimed collections of poetry, three critically acclaimed novels, and two memoirs, including History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life, a New York Times bestseller. She is executive editor and vice president at W. W. Norton & Company. Her work has been a finalist for the James Laughlin Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and the Books for a Better Life Awards. In 2014, she was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to poetry. She lives in New York City. Find out more at JillBialosky.com.

About Tom Taylorson

Tom Taylorson is an award-winning audiobook narrator and a veteran voice actor with decades of experience in commercials, video games, and animation. Based in LA, he has done work for Hyundai, McDonalds, Blizzard, Warner Brothers Games, Disney, LucasFilm Animation, and more.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Marjorie on July 26, 2015

This is a slow, leisurely book with beautiful poetic touches throughout. It’s quite an in-depth look into the art world and how passion for creating art and the business end of selling it often clash. I felt as though I was walking next to these characters and living their days alongside of them as......more

Goodreads review by Dindy on October 13, 2015

Artfully Written The Prize is a Winner. Captures the art world and the intersection of art and commerce perfectly. Equal billing to the mind of an artist and the gallerist - art for the sake of art versus art as a business. Characters well-drawn come to life through the author's descriptions, gestur......more

Goodreads review by Freesiab on February 07, 2016

I was so looking forward to this book. I quit at 50% because I was just dreading reading anything more from the protagonist. 2 stars because the writing was good and I enjoyed learning about the other side of the art world but the plot had no direction. I can read books about an unlikeable protagoni......more

Goodreads review by Lori Tatar on October 06, 2015

So maybe all the classics haven't already been written. Goodreads provided me with a copy of "The Prize: A Novel" by Jill Bialosky. It is an incredible look at one man, Edward Darby, who has everything. He runs with the art crowd and is, in fact a curator for a high-end and very reputable gallery, h......more

Goodreads review by Shannon on December 24, 2015

I received this book through a First Reads giveaway. Honestly, that was probably the only reason I finished it, apart from my naive hope that it might get more interesting or pick up speed as it went along. The plot is wafer-thin: the protagonist, Edward Darby, cheats on his wife, deals with a bunch......more

Quotes

“A compulsively readable novel about art: both that on the canvas and that of finding one’s home in another.” Elizabeth Berg, New York Times bestselling author

“This fluently sophisticated and exquisitely pleasurable novel is radiant with precise and sensuous descriptions and intricately laced with discerning and affecting insights into the passion and business of art and the meaning and struggles of marriage.” Booklist (starred review)

“A respected New York art dealer feels his reputation and the ideals he’s lived by falling out of his grasp in this novel by celebrated poet and memoirist Bialosky…Like Edward feels upon discovering a transcendent piece of art, this book finds that little opening at the edge of your soul and seeps in.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Luminous…One expects a poet’s prose to soar in fiction, and the author does not disappoint, crafting her own work of art with her evocative, fresh descriptions and her careful observations of how artists transform inspiration into their work.” Publishers Weekly

“Renowned poet Jill Bialosky has once again turned her penetrating eye to fiction and lucky for us, because here she delves deeply into nothing less then the complexities of art and desire, and their often dangerous interaction with commerce. At its heart, her wonderful new work, The Prize, is tense, romantic, and timely; a novel about passion and betrayal.” Helen Schulman, author of This Beautiful Life, a New York Times Notable Book

“An erotically charged story about the contemporary art world suggestive of a Roman a clef, but far more sponsored by a sublime and sympathetic narrative imagination and boldness…The Prize is vividly modern, and in the tensions offered between art and life, timeless. Yet finally, Bialosky’s novel is a kind of old-fashioned love story, with an ending whose bittersweetness is powerfully earned.” Howard Norman, National Book Award finalist

“The Prize is a subtle, incisive, and erotically charged exploration of the dark crossroad where art, money, and obsession converge. Jill Bialosky has written a true and dangerous novel.” John Banville, award-winning author of The Sea

“Jill Bialosky brings a poet’s ear for language to this moving, knowing meditation on marriage and art and the emotional costs of a life spent in pursuit of even the worthiest ideals.” Jonathan Dee, author of The Privileges, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

“Without the artist’s ambition to share a poem or play or painting, and without some means of sharing (a publisher, the Internet), these creations would hardly exist. This necessary pull between art and commerce, creation and ambition, forms the core of Jill Bialosky’s lucid and meditative new work, The Prize.” Library Journal

Awards

  • Kirkus Reviews Pick
  • Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books
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