The Museum of Modern Love

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Winner of the 2017 Stella Prize.

'This is a weirdly beautiful book.' David Walsh founder and curator, MONA

'Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one.' Stella Adler

She watched as the final hours of The Artist is Present passed by, sitter after sitter in a gaze with the woman across the table. Jane felt she had witnessed a thing of inexplicable beauty among humans who had been drawn to this art and had found the reflection of a great mystery. What are we How should we live

If this was a dream, then he wanted to know when it would end. Maybe it would end if he went to see Lydia. But it was the one thing he was not allowed to do.

Arky Levin is a film composer in New York whose wife has asked him to keep one devastating promise. One day he finds his way to The Atrium at MOMA and sees Marina Abramovic in The Artist is Present. The performance continues for seventy-five days and, as it unfolds, so does Arky. As he watches and meets other people drawn to the exhibit, he slowly starts to understand what might be missing in his life and what he must do.

This dazzlingly original novel asks beguiling questions about the nature of art, life and love and finds a way to answer them.

'The Museum of Modern Love is more than just that rare treat, a book that requires something of the reader - it is a book that painstakingly prepares you for its own requirements. In a playful way, this bold new novel by Heather Rose is an astute meditation on art, bravery, friendship, love, how to live, and on dying.' The Sydney Morning Herald

'Mesmerising ... Art, which can never be unequivocally universal, is explored from a variety of angles, in snippets of overheard conversation (profound, opinionated, banal, sometimes amusing), and in the debates and reflections of Rose's characters. Never didactic, this is one conversation worth following.' Australian Book Review

'Audacious and beautiful, The Museum of Modern Love tests the boundaries of a form ... From its conception to its last page, the book challenges our perceptions of where life ends and art begins. When the book is at its most powerful, we're also invited into the centre, asked if we'd like to take a seat and meet the gaze.' The Australian

Reviews

'One of my stand-out Australian reads from 2016 was undoubtedly The Museum of Modern Love... It is a glorious novel, meditative and special in a way that defies easy articulation.' - Hannah Kent, The Guardian 'The Best Australian Books of 2016' - 21/12/16

Author Bio

Heather Rose is the Australian author of nine novels. Her most recent novel, Bruny, won the 2020 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for an Indie Book Award and Davitt Award. Her seventh novel, The Museum of Modern Love, won the 2017 Stella Prize. It also won the 2017 Christina Stead Prize and the 2017 Margaret Scott Prize. It has been published internationally and translated into numerous languages. Both The Museum of Modern Love and The Butterfly Man were longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. The Butterfly Man won the Davitt Award in 2006, and in 2007 The River Wife won the international Varuna Eleanor Dark Fellowship. Heather has also written for younger readers under the pen-name Angelica Banks with Danielle Woods. The series has been published internationally and shortlisted twice for the Aurealis Awards for best children's fantasy. The memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here was shortlisted for the nonfiction prize in the Indie Book Awards in 2022. Heather lives in Tasmania.