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Spending

Mary Catherine Gordon

1998256 pagesabout 4–6 hours
1998
first published
  • 1998SCRIBNER'S · 256 pagesISBN 9780747536734
  • 1998Scribner · 301 pages · ENGISBN 9780684839455
  • 1998Thorndike Press · 531 pages · ENGISBN 9780786214204
  • 1999Bloomsbury Publishing Plc · 301 pages · ENGISBN 9780747542742
  • 1998Random House Audio · ENGISBN 9780375402791
  • 1999Scribner · 304 pages · ENGISBN 9780684852041

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. (He is ever willing to pose for her.). Soon after she and B become lovers, Monica starts work on a controversial new series of paintings based on her perception that the deposed Christs of Renaissance art were not dead, but postorgasmic. The show of her new work, championed by the critics and picketed by the Christian Right, makes her a media darling and makes her rich. B, meanwhile, suffers a sudden loss of fortune. Will she takes care of him as he took care of her? How does he handle his loss of power? How does she? What happens in the bedroom?

Worth knowing

Romance levelSubplot

When and where

ThemesLove
How do you feel?