![]() ![]() ![]() Rachel's tale is an engaging one I was swept up in the narrative and read the book over the course of only a few days. If he teaches her anything at all, it is to follow the sun-to seek light and beauty despite the darkness that threatens to overwhelm her. Rachel, with dogged devotion and deep love for this man who sees past her tawdry circumstances to a soul that, like his, has suffered greatly, never deserts him. His biggest secret, the one that results in the "ear incident" itself, is the mental crises that plague him, the fits (epilepsy? lead poisoning? syphilis? Bundrick opts for bipolar disorder) that send him to hospital and asylum and ultimately compel him to take his own life. As the relationship between the two blossoms, Vincent slowly reveals his hidden side: his complex relationship with his art-dealer brother Theo, who supports him monetarily and emotionally, yet whose happy and seemingly unattainable family life torments the artist the guilt Vincent carries over abandoning a woman he lived with for years his frustration at being ignored and misunderstood by the art establishment of his day. ![]() A schoolteacher's daughter who turns to prostitution in order to survive after the deaths of her parents, Rachel first encounters "the foreigner with the funny name who wander the countryside painting pictures" in a public garden when he draws her as she sleeps. The reader comes to know this other Vincent through the eyes of Rachel, the Arlesian prostitute who narrates the tale. ![]()
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