A Woman With No Clothes On
Cover art to the first edition of "A Woman With No Clothes On" by V. R. Main
First edition cover art
AuthorV. R. Main
CountryFrance
LanguageEnglish
GenreHistorical fiction
PublishedLondon: Delancey, 2008[1]
Pages335
ISBN9780953911974
OCLC280369069

A Woman With No Clothes On (2008) is V. R. Main's debut novel. Set in 19th-century Paris, it is the story of 18-year-old Victorine Meurent, the painter Edouard Manet and their shared longing for the ultimate painting. The novel won the Trafalgar Squared Prize,[2] and was shortlisted for The People's Book Prize.[3] It was published by Delancey Press.[1]

Plot summary

Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe, Musée d'Orsay, 1862–1863 by Édouard Manet

The aristocratic Manet and the working-class Victorine Meurent narrate A Woman With No Clothes On. A chance meeting between the two leads to an intense relationship of painting and sexual tension. Manet creates a scandal when he exhibits Le déjeuner sur l'herbe and Olympia in which the naked model is a young Victorine. While critics and the general public dismiss the works, and label Victorine a common prostitute, she is determined to make her mark in the art world as a painter in her own right. Her bitter struggle to succeed is punctuated by the exchanges between Manet and his friend Baudelaire on the matter of modernism.

Critical response

A Woman With No Clothes On was the winner of the Trafalgar Squared Prize for Work in Progress (2008). It was described by the chair of judges, Wendy Robertson as "outstanding. A powerful novel. The writing is original, literary, intense and well-observed".[4]

The author of Manet, Lesley Stevenson praised Main for "rescu[ing] Victorine from her invisibility in the Parisian art world of the nineteenth century".[4]

The novel received press attention in The Guardian[5] and The Times. The Socialist Worker carried an article on the novel's attention to issues of gender and social class,[6] as well as on the feminist blog The F-Word.[7]

Notes

  1. 1 2 Main, V. R. (2008). A Woman With No Clothes On. Delancey. ISBN 9780953911974. OCLC 280369069.
  2. ↑ "A Woman With No Clothes On". Delancey Press. Retrieved 6 April 2014.
  3. ↑ "People's Book Prize - Book : A Woman with No Clothes On". peoplesbookprize.com. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  4. 1 2 V. R. Main (2005-12-15). "A Woman with No Clothes on (Book) by V. R. Main (2008)". Waterstones.com. Archived from the original on 2012-10-12. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  5. ↑ Main, V. R.: The Guardian, G2, pages 16-17. 03/10/2008
  6. ↑ Cookson, Matthew: Socialist Worker, page 11. 22/11/2008
  7. ↑ Jess McCabe. "Victorine Meurent - Blog". The F-Word. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
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