Mysterious masterpiece

America, October, 2004 by John B. Breslin

Unveiling

A Novel

By Suzanne M. Wolfe

Paraclete Press. 190p $19.95

ISBN 1557253544

Novels inspired by great works of art are hardly novel, but in the past several years their number seems to be growing. Tracy Chevalier can claim some credit for the increase, since her Girl With a Pearl Earring proved to be both a best-seller and the inspiration for a successful film, and her second novel, The Lady and the Unicorn, seems headed in the same direction.

This first novel by Suzanne Wolfe, who is executive editor of the magazine Image, clearly owes a debt to this genre, though not without Wolfe's own special twist. Rather than novelize the making of the work of art, she has focused on its restoration, writing in the present...