A review by jaclyncrupi
The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose

4.0

I think it's easy for novels about ideas, art and artists to feel pretentious but Heather Rose manages to avoid that and she does it by delivering characters who feel so very real. Based around Abramovic's three-month long performance piece at MoMA, The Artist is Present, this book follows various people who visited or were involved in the piece. Full disclosure: I'm a huge Abramovic fan and may have stalked her in Geneva for a time (she smiled at me) so I was a little nervous going in but I needn't have been. Heather Rose has written an absolute gem of a novel. My only criticism is the narrator – it just didn't always work and I desperately wanted to make some tweaks and edits. I also wished the book focused more on Jane and Levin but I can forgive it that and understand that Rose wanted a broader scope. It's a hard book to write about (always a good sign) and one I know I will be thinking about for a long time. I absolutely loved it!