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    Feast Your Eyes: A Novel
    Feast Your Eyes: A Novel
    Feast Your Eyes: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    Feast Your Eyes: A Novel

    Written by Myla Goldberg

    Narrated by Myla Goldberg, Samantha Desz, Lisa Flanagan and

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019

    2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Finalist

    2019 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

    2020 Chautauqua Prize Finalist

    “A daringly inventive parable of female creativity and motherhood” (O, The Oprah Magazine) from Myla Goldberg, the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Bee Season, about a female photographer grappling with ambition and motherhood—a balancing act familiar to women of every generation.

    Feast Your Eyes, framed as the catalogue notes from a photography show at the Museum of Modern Art, tells the life story of Lillian Preston: “America’s Worst Mother, America’s Bravest Mother, America’s Worst Photographer, or America’s Greatest Photographer, depending on who was talking.” After discovering photography as a teenager through her high school’s photo club, Lillian rejects her parents’ expectations of college and marriage and moves to New York City in 1955. When a small gallery exhibits partially nude photographs of Lillian and her daughter Samantha, Lillian is arrested, thrust into the national spotlight, and targeted with an obscenity charge. Mother and daughter’s sudden notoriety changes the course of both of their lives, and especially Lillian’s career as she continues a life-long quest for artistic legitimacy and recognition.

    “A searching consideration of the way that the identities and perceptions of a female artist shift over time” (The New Yorker), Feast Your Eyes shares Samantha’s memories, interviews with Lillian’s friends and lovers, and excerpts from Lillian’s journals and letters—a collage of stories and impressions, together amounting to an astounding portrait of a mother and an artist dedicated, above all, to a vision of beauty, truth, and authenticity. Myla Goldberg has gifted us with “a mother-daughter story, an art-monster story, and an exciting structural gambit” (Lit Hub)—and, in the end, “a universal and profound story of love and loss” (New York Newsday).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateApr 16, 2019
    ISBN9781508282990
    Author

    Myla Goldberg

    Myla Goldberg is the bestselling author of Feast Your Eyes, The False Friend, Wickett’s Remedy, and Bee Season, which was a New York Times Notable Book, a winner of the Borders New Voices Prize, a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award, and was adapted to film and widely translated.

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    Reviews for Feast Your Eyes

    4.5/5

    54 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Each photograph is beautifully described, so we can picture the same photo in our minds. (It reminded me of the song descriptions listed in “Daisy Jones and the Six”). Interspersed with the photographs are journal entries and letters from Lillian, presenting more depth to her state of mind and life at the time of the said photo. We also hear from Samantha’s perspective as she reflects on each photo. Lillian Preston may be a fictional character, but she was also an artist and mother in a time when it was difficult not only being one thing, but both. I don’t know much about the art world as I do writers, but Myla Goldberg seamlessly writes about the photography process and the art world culture so one is easily understand the art form and these characters. My only complaint about this book was that there weren’t actual examples of the beloved photographs, as I felt about the songs so wistfully described in “Daisy Jones and the Six”.
    • 5/5
      I had not read a Goldberg novel for about 20 years - since Bee Season, which I loved. I should have known what I was missing. As usual, she develops characters so well that the reader feels intimately acquainted. Her range of topics is amazing too, and there is always an underlying issue to explore. Here the main one is art - what constitutes it and who gets to decide? Lillian Preston is driven by her passion for photography. In 1953 she leaves provincial Cleveland for NYC to pursue her passion, and here we see one of her flaws: her initial enthusiasm was inspired by a fellow high school Camera Club member, Sam Decker - he is off to fight in Korea and Lillian fabricates a 'romance' conducted mostly of one-sided letters. But that starting point is enough for her to take off on her own and when she becomes acclimated to the big city, she becomes entirely autonomous and completely an artist, yes starving, but that is where the stereotype ends. As a young woman on her own in this time period, she faces many obstacles, which are thoughtfully portrayed. There is no black and white here, only shades of gray to ponder, like Lily's photos themselves. She has two significant relationships: Charles with whom she has a daughter, Samantha and later Ken who initially supports her art, but then wants the traditional family situation which Lily just cannot do. She makes lasting friends: Deb, a poet, Nina a gallery owner, and later Grete, a weaver from Sweden who is married to a black man, another taboo at the time. They have a daughter Kaja who becomes Sam's best friend. The way these women support each other and pursue their art is impressive, though some would argue selfish. That's the fine line Goldberg is walking here. In 1963, when a series of photos Lily takes that include Samantha get labeled obscene and Lily and Nina are arrested, that is when the issues really become debatable: art, censorship, women's rights, family values, justice all have a moment in the lens. What makes this book unique and even more compelling is the way it is told: it is in the form of an exhibition catalogue of the body of Lillian Preston's work. Commentary is provided mostly by Samantha, with some journal excerpts from Lily, some letters from Deb and interviews with Grete and Sam. Having all these different view points lets those who knew Lily best tell the story, and this technique takes it out of her hands. The photos are described so well that you can envision them even though they are not included. I was left wishing they were real so I could look them up and continue the story. What comes through most is the price Lily paid to make art and meet life on her own terms and the unintended toll it took on Sam. "...there was a difference between a promise and an aspiration. The whole point of an aspiration is to make yourself reach. The only people who achieve everything they aspire to are lazy or cowards." (p.318) That's a high standard by which to live.
    • 4/5
      This story of an extraordinary woman photographer and her daughter is told through the eyes of the daughter, friends, and her journal as a catalog to go with an exhibition of her photos after her death. It provides a good picture of a complicated mother/daughter relationship although at times it felt as though the voice of all the different story tellers were very much the same.
    • 5/5
      Myra Goldberg's novel is told in the form of a catalog that is meant to provide background information to a retrospective of the photographer, Lillian Preston. Though we never see the photographs, each one is named and described by her daughter, Samantha, who sets the scene and supplements her writing with her mother's journal entries and anecdotes from various friends. The idea was to "Use everything—use her diaries, use her letters, go back and talk to the important people in her life—to show her work in a way that an art-establishment type never could.” Though appearing disjointed, the story actually follows chronologically, providing an intimate look at a unique mother- daughter relationship and a portrait of an artist struggling with the fulfillment of her vision. Goldberg based her writing on an amalgam of real life photographers who were thought of a street photographers, depicting everyday hardships and fighting censorship laws of the early sixties. Goldberg lists her acknowledgments at the end and in doing so provides the readers with a glimpse of the research that went into this creative endeavor. I recommend googling some of the referenced artists to see the types of photos being presented. I was surprised how much I enjoyed this novel and can see why this was recommend for the National Book Critics Circle Award. I would be interested in looking into other works, Bee Season being the most recognized. Some lines:Lillian Preston was mostly a street photographer. She lived her life blending into backgrounds and snapping whoever passed by. For all that, these people aren’t strangers. Sometimes it’s a look in the eyes, or the way someone is standing, but what’s unfamiliar lifts away.Because of that, it’s not like any catalogue you’ve read before. It’s personal. It’s unprofessional. And when the art-establishment types saw it, they were smart enough to leave it alone.Her soft, pale body is like something slipped from a shell, and her face—with its crazy mixture of rebellion, invitation, uncertainty, and pride—is the most naked thing about her.I don’t think Lillian started loving me during the subway trip back from her averted abortion, but clearly something changed between blueberry and mango. From this portrait on, her fierceness has transformed into something radiant and calm. The battle has been fought: love has won.Sometimes when I was with her, a small sound came from her mouth, and this was like seeing the fin of the shark and knowing the shape that was hidden below.Lillian explained that she felt about men the way she felt about pistachio nuts: she did not mind to have them around, but she did not go out of her way to find them, and she did not miss them when they were gone.“but I used to take it personally that at every turn, you seemed to make the choice I’d least approve of. If my heart attack taught me anything, it’s that we’re all a lot less important than we think.Under no circumstances would I have imagined a future in which being Samantha Preston would mean free liquor or weed for the asking, a standing invitation to every art party in Los Angeles, and a distinguished-artist boyfriend who liked to eat me for dessert.I’d been to a few funerals by that point, so I knew death as a destination, but before Lilly, I didn’t know the journey.
    • 5/5
      Lillian Preston was a photographer who achieved more notoriety than fame in her life. She was a street photographer, taking pictures of people in unguarded moments. This novel is set up as the text from the exhibition book for a retrospective of her work at MoMA. So there's a forward by the singer from a punk band from the seventies that took inspiration and a name from the photograph that caused Lillian's notoriety and the catalog text is largely by her daughter, who was the subject of some of her photographs, as well as people who knew her, letters and extracts from her journal. The result is a vivid character study of an extraordinary woman, one whose photographs are described but never shown, yet I feel as though I would recognize one of her photographs instantly.This was a five star read for me, there was not a single page of this novel that I didn't love. The subject matter, that of a woman who chose to live without compromise as a photographer, who chose to raise her child alone in the fifties and sixties when neither of those paths was acceptable for woman, and that of living for one's art, is catnip to me, but the writing was also brilliant. Goldberg spent ten years writing this book and instead of being overwritten, it feels fresh and spontaneous. The format is so well executed that it enhanced the intimacy of the story Goldberg was telling.
    • 5/5
      Feast Your Eyes is a mother-daughter story told through letters, journals, different characters points of view making one of the most stylistically interesting books I've read. The artist's photos come alive in the reader's mind even though there are no actual photos in the book. The characters' flaws and talents are apparent throughout the novel. It's never clear what will happen next, keeping the reader wanting more. Although it is quite dark at times, this is one of the best books I've read. However, I recommend it cautiously since not all will enjoy the plot.
    • 5/5
      In her latest novel, Goldberg tries something new: writing the entire book in the form of a photography exhibition catalog--yet we never see a single photograph. The gallery number, title, and date of each photo appear, followed by commentary by the artist's daughter, friends and ex-lovers, and letters and journal entries written by the artist herself. The works range from the 1950s, when Lillian Preston rejects her parents' plan for her college education and moves to New York to pursue her passion in photography, to her death from leukemia in 1977. A quiet woman, Lillian nevertheless manages to choose her own path. When she finds herself pregnant at 19, she declines an abortion at the last minute and rejects her parents' offer to "help" (by sending her off to a distant relative to have the child and give it up for adoption). She struggles to keep herself and her daughter Samantha afloat financially, even rejecting another offer of marriage, but she never stops taking photos. A breaking point almost comes when a small gallery show results in arrest and obscenity charges over "the Samantha series" that depicts Lillian's daughter in semi-undress. These include what becomes an infamous photo, "Mommy Is Sick," in which Samantha offers a glass of milk to her bedridden, bloodstained mother whop has just had an abortion. (No spoilers here--the photo and the incident are described in the novel's first pages.) The incident caused changes in the mother-daughter relationship that are the focus of most of the novel. In that sense, it is a coming of age novel, but it also tackles questions about parenting, art, friendship, and morality. Mann draws on cultural keystones throughout: the Beats, Sputnik, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War protests, punk rock, Saturday Night Live. The structure provides a means of presenting multiple points of view without the usual practice of ascribing alternating chapters to different narrators. As a result, the conflicts between and feelings of each character are more immediate.It has been almost a decade since Goldberg's last book, but Feast Your Eyes is well worth the wait.