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    The Last Nude
    The Last Nude
    The Last Nude
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Last Nude

    Written by Ellis Avery

    Narrated by Barbara Caruso and Therese Plummer

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Paris, 1927, a day in July. A destitute young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka. Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara#8217;s most accomplished and prized works of art, including Beautiful Rafaela, #8220;one of the most important nudes of the twentieth century#8221; (New York Times).#160;#160;The relationship between the artist and her muse lasted less than a year, yet in 1980, just before Tamara died, she was working on a copy of Beautiful Rafaela. Author Ellis Avery imagines their affair from Rafaela#8217;s point of view, and the final day of Tamara#8217;s life from the painter#8217;s point of view. A window into Jazz Age Paris as the forces of history close in, The Last Nude is a story of genius and craft, art and money, friendship and desire.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateJan 5, 2012
    ISBN9781611744569
    The Last Nude

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    Reviews for The Last Nude

    3.5/5

    31 ratings24 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Several people had recommended this book to me, as I tend to be interested in stories set in France. I'm glad they did -- it was a good story. I found Rafaela particularly fascinating, though I didn't really care for Tamara.

      I found it odd that there was a part two, with Tamara's POV later in life. I think it would have been just as well to end the book with the end of part one. Part two seemed unnecessary, and IMO, didn't add to the story.

      Excellent book, well worth the read.
    • 4/5
      A fascinating book. I was so intrigued by all of its characters and going ons, that I had to google the Lempicka's complete works and see the paintings mentioned in the novel for myself. Tamara Lempicka was a famous artist who began her life as a Pole in Russia...later kicked out in the revolution. She honed her skills as a a painter in Paris and explored freely with her sexuality. Apparently, (in this book, anyway) any artistic woman in France in 1927 worth her salt was a Lesbian. The heroine and Lempicka tend to socialize and stay in that inner circle.Rafaela narrates the tale. Rafaela escaped an unwanted marriage to find herself posing naked on Lempicka's couch. Lempicka takes Rafaela to her bed as well through her narrative and eyes, we learn about how Lempicka painted La Belle Rafaela, The Dream, Nude With Dove, Chemise Rose, and Full Summer. The pink chemise...a gift sewn by Rafaela...the Nude With Dove...due to an issue of jealousy and an old lover of Lempicka's, it's actually Rafaela's body, but another woman's face. These paintings, mostly of Rafaela, set off a bidding war between two very rich men. Enter greed, lies, deceit, train tickets, unlocked doors, money exchanging hands, private eyes smoking cigarettes, and above all, Rafaela's broken heart. See, she loves Lempicka, but Lempicka only loves...herself.The last part, the last quarter of the book, suddenly switches over to an old Lempicka with shaky hands and a fading memory and I actually fell asleep here. I found her narrative very boring, and I was a tad disappointed that we don't really find out what happened to Rafaela. At the same time, however, I also appreciated the unique ending. It's different. The entire novel is different.I also learned a lot about a fascinating woman. Violette Morris: a race car driver who cut off her breasts just to better fit in a car, a professional boxer who even knocked out men, and a gifted athlete. Sadly, she also ended up on the Gestapo's side during the war...but nevertheless, she had a few guest appearances in this books and I was really intrigued. Had to google her as well. Favorite scene: When Rafaela posed at the party under the flashing light...quickly.. just three flashes. Wow!
    • 2/5
      The Last Nude tells the story of two women, the artist Tamara de Lampicka and her model and lover Rafaela Fano.The majority of the novel is told from Rafaela's point of view during the period in which she met Tamara, modeled for her, and their relationship came to an abrupt halt. This portion of the novel is interesting, and really portrays a naive young woman growing up in an exotic, new place, and falling in love for the first time.Some of the writing in this section was fabulous, most of it was merely okay, some of it was downright boring. Rafaela is in many ways naive, yet often the writer manages to make her seem stupid, and I don't necessarily think this is on purpose.The latter, far shorter portion of the novel deals with the fact that the area in which Rafaela was living was dangerous during the second World War. And Rafaela is a Jew. Many of the characters peopling this novel, in fact, are Jewish.This latter portion is what makes me feel that Avery was trying to achieve a very personable novel, with characters that the reader will become emotionally invested in, and failed.It's an okay read. This novel is not one that I will rave about. My feelings are more lukewarm.
    • 5/5
      I picked up Ellis Avery’s latest novel The Last Nude after reading Danika’s glowing review of it on the lesbrary earlier this year. It’s not every author who can claim your lifelong allegiance after you’ve read only one of her works, but I agree with Danika that Avery is one of these writers and that reading The Last Nude is enough to convince you. This historical novel, set in Paris in the decadent 1920s period between the two world wars, is an easy book to love and sink into. From the first unassuming sentence (“I only met Tamara de Lempicka because I needed a hundred francs”), The Last Nude is captivating and delightful. The writing is exquisite; the characterization rich; and the setting wonderfully and lovingly rendered in superb detail. Just because the novel is beautiful, though, doesn’t mean it isn’t also without its delicious complexities. We are introduced to the whirlwind environment of 20s Paris, in all its queer, smoky glory through the eyes of Rafaela Fano, an Italian-American Jew who is also experiencing it for the first time. Rafaela (her actual last name isn’t known) is a real historical person about whom we don’t know much except she was Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka’s model and inspiration for some of her most arresting works, including La Belle Rafaela, which graces the cover of the novel. Rafaela is both sweetly naïve and street-wise, having survived her family’s attempt to arrange her marriage at age sixteen by trading sex for passage to Paris. She’s survived in the city thus far by doing sex work, sometimes in more explicit scenarios than others; Rafaela is on the brink of a so-called respectable job at a department store when Tamara, seduced by her beauty on the street, recruits the young woman to model for her. Tamara, as you might have guessed, is unbelievably sexy and glamorous; of course, she’s also a supremely talented artist with an insatiable appetite for art, wealth, and power. Rafaela falls for Tamara, hard. You know from early on, despite the fact that the story is related to us through Rafaela’s perspective, that Tamara’s motives are more complicated and less wholesome than Rafaela’s young, innocent heart wants to believe. In fact, it’s not just Tamara, it’s the whole circle Rafaela is introduced to: we enter the exotic world of the queer, artsy, bohemian population and are by turns charmed and appalled by them just as Rafaela is. Like us 21st century readers, Rafaela is a stranger to this world, its hopeful possibilities, and its hidden sinister underbelly. Despite the sense of apprehension you feel knowing that Tamara and Rafaela’s love affair is doomed, Tamara offers something to Rafaela that is priceless: she gives Rafaela her own body back and opens up her sexuality. After the first time they make love, Rafaela recalls:“And suddenly I remembered a day when I was very small, before my brothers came along. When my mother went out for groceries, I slopped … oil on the banister and slid down. I climbed those stairs again and again, to get that feeling: how slick my knickers got, how distinctly I could feel the spreading wings of my little figa, how the shock of bliss pleated through me like lightning. I had forgotten this kind of eagerness until now, as my body sobbed into Tamara’s hand. Again, again! I wanted to crow. I was a giddy witch on a broomstick. I was a leaping dog. I was liquor; I was laughter; I was a sliding girl on a shining rail: something I’d forgotten how to be.”Later on, Rafaela tells us how she has learned to love and revel in her body:“Ever since my sixteenth birthday, my body had felt like a coin in an unfamiliar currency: small, shiny, and heavy, obviously of value to somebody, but not to me… My body felt coincidental to me—I could just as easily be a tree, a stone, a gust of wind. For so long, I still felt like the ten-year-old me, skinny as a last wafer of soap, needling through Washington Square on her way to Baxter Street. But my months with Tamara had worn away the lonely old questions and replaced them with a greed of my own: my body was just a fact, this night, a kind of euphoria. I coincided with it, and with the dancing crowd. Throbbing with the horns and drums, we formed a waterfall passing over a light, each of us a drop, a spark, bright, gone. The music danced us, and I knew it wouldn’t last, this body I’d learnt to love.”If you’re at all familiar with famous lesbian/queer/bi expatriate women from this period, you’ll be delighted to see the literary couple Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, who ran successful bookstores and first published James Joyce’s Ulysses, function as Rafaela’s queer elders. Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas make appearances too, as well as Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney, and Violette Morris. If you don’t know who any of these women are, I suggest looking them up asap. Ah, if only I could time travel back to one of their parties and chat with them, wearing smoky black eye shadow and red lipstick, and smoking cigarettes out of a long classy holder without knowing the consequences.The consequences of the way Tamara treats Rafaela don’t fully emerge until the second part of the book, much smaller than the first, and from the perspective of Tamara as an old woman. On the one hand, I felt robbed of the chance to see in her own words how Rafaela pulls herself up after Tamara’s betrayal and ‘follows her dreams.’ On the other, Avery had to do something to humanize Tamara for us, if only to complicate the view of her as a ruthless egotistical villain. Although I can’t say I was completely satisfied with Tamara’s atonement, I was glad in the end to know that Tamara did care for Rafaela, amidst her self-delusions and guilt. In a way, these revelations made the love story all the more tragic; they also made the novel even more complex, powerful, and poignant than it already was. This, considering The Last Nude is (lesbian) historical fiction at its finest, is quite an achievement.
    • 3/5
      Interesting art history novel around Polish born artist Tamara de Lempicka in the roaring 1920s in Paris. With her sharp clean lines and vibrant colors, de Lempicka became one of the most sought after portrait artist of her time. Rafaela, a young girl is hired by de Lempicka to model for a series of nude paintings, quickly becomes attracted to and infatuated by this bohemian artist, not realizing in her innocence how she was being manipulated. As de Lempicka's fame soars following an exhibition of her paintings, Rafaela is unknowingly drawn into webs of deceit and intrigue. Her naivete is cruelly shattered on the eve of what was to be a romantic trip with her lover and she is forced to decide if she will continue to allow herself to be used or if she will choose a better life for herself.Using the fiction to weave certain true events together, the author draws our attention to the decadent lifestyle of artists and their patrons during that era. If there are criticisms I have, they are that I didn't care for the manner in which the story of Rafaela was abruptly cut off and the manner in which the last third of the book time traveled to the final days of de Lempicka. The absence of a smooth transition in the timeframes was jarring, to say the least, and I thought the author's attempts to tie in various incidents together patchy at best.
    • 3/5
      Extremely well-researched. Lots of name-dropping and historical detail. Too much even. I could never get past the feeling of reading an extremely well-researched book. The magic of the story eluded me--perhaps because I didn't empathize with Rafaela's slavish adoration of de Lempicka whose sense of entitlement and egoism left me cold.
    • 4/5
      The Last Nude tells the story of the painter Tamara de Lempicka, a Polish aristocrat, and her relationship with Rafaela Fono, the Italian-American girl who modeled for de Lempicka's most celebrated paintings.Most of the story is told through the voice of Rafaela, a half-Jewish teenager, raised in New York City, who winds up penniless on the streets of Paris after fleeing an arranged marriage. Prostitution is the only prospect for Rafaela until a chance encounter with Tamara de Lempicka leads, not only to a stunningly successful artistic partnership, but to a torrid love affair between artist and model.The artistic milieu of Paris in the 1920s is vividly and convincingly portrayed. De Lempicka moved among a circle of artists, writers, émigrés, and adventurers who experimented as boldly with drugs and sex as they did in their chosen art. But greed, jealousy and betrayal were ever at hand and cast a shadow over Rafaela and Tamara just as the rise of Fascism was casting a shadow over Europe.The final pages of the novel give a retrospective from Tamara's point of view during her life's final years in Cuernavaca, Mexico. They complete a moving portrait of this glamorous, haughty, but troubled artist.
    • 3/5
      The Last Nude is a historicial novel mostly set in Paris during the 1920's. Seventeen-year-old Rafaela escapes from a planned marriage to live on her own in Paris with no resources or friends. She gets by as a prostitute until she meets Tamara de Lempicka, an artist, who lures Rafaela into her world to be her muse. Love and deceit are then central to the plot. The characters and the city are developed in rich language that sweeps the reader up and into the world of Paris in the '20's. Part One of the book is told from Rafaela's point-of-view and is fresh and young. Part Two is from Tamara's point-of-view and it is bitter and old. I missed Rafaela at the conclusion of the book and felt a bit dissappointed in the offhand way we learn of her life after Tamara so ruthlessly discards her - something you are sure is coming as you listen to the naive Rafaela. I read the entire book before realizing that it is about a real artist and still found it interesting just as a novel. There is a lot of detail about Paris in the '20's - Shakespeare and Company book store, artists and writers - so if you like that time period this book is another window into that world.
    • 4/5
      Like artist Tamara de Lempicka, author Ellis Avery paints Paris of the 1920’s, with broad bold strokes of smoky sensuous color. Paris is swinging, artistic, colorful and full of movement with the Jazz era, and the Ernest Hemingway types talking politics over small, crowed bistro tables. This was the time of the public liberation of open lesbian relationships.The Last Nude is a complex, yet dark and disturbing brief glimpse into the tumultuous relationship between Lempicka and her muse, Rafaela. As in many relationships of all types, this paring beget the extreme highs and lows of love, sexual obsession and tragedy. This relationship produced several of her more famous nude works of this period, “La Belle Rafaela”, as well as “The Dream”. I found the research on the paintings, the ‘art scene’, as well as the Jazz period of the times absorbing reading. However, the relationship between the artist and muse and its dark spiraling nature spun out of control and I felt the relationship was strained and draining .
    • 4/5
      Who wouldn't want to follow Tamara de Lempicka around Paris during the age of deco and jazz? What bettter person? What better decade? THE LAST NUDE by the intriguing writer, Ellis Avery, gives LGBT literature one of its best novels centering around the theme of bisexuality. Kudos to the author for accomplishing the difficult feat of understanding and writing about bisexuality while creating a book that should easily appeal to mainstream readers as well. De Lempicka is a fascinating and difficult choice for Avery. As one reads, one senses that the character is not always easy for Avery to work with. There is much to love and hate about de Lempicka; we admire and we are repelled. There are moments while reading when one can palpably feel the struggle the author is having with this larger-than-life woman artist whose twisted history of seduction and betrayal seems almost to have overtaken Avery herself as she fights with de Lempicka through her keyboard.What THE LAST NUDE does well is introduce or remind readers of a special time in Paris when the city is filled with expatriates, all seeming to live edgy and creative lives, some with money and some without. Many famous artists and socialites are mentioned and appear throughout the book. Although this can seem a bit gimmicky at times, it is also fun for the reader and sets de Lempicka's life and the life of her model, Rafaela, into a lively and understandable picture frame.Ellis Avery has an excellent sensibility when it comes to writing about bisexuality, a difficult subject not always explored or portrayed well in literature. For this one reason alone, THE LAST NUDE has the potential to be nominated for awards and given special consideration. Avery's talent for this may have played out better if she hadn't tried to write about both a famous person and bisexuality as the two often seem to fight each other across the pages. On balance, if she had not chosen de Lempicka as the vehicle for her story, the portrayal of bisexuality might not get the attention it is bound to receive with de Lempicka as its "star."THE LAST NUDE has a few rough spots that may cause readers pause, but should not interfere greatly with their overall enjoyment of the book. Rafaela's portrayal as the teenager chosen by Lempicka as her star model and part-time lover often feels incomplete and not totally fleshed out. Rafaela's forays into prostitution are quite well written and believeable, but much of Rafaela's story, including her background, her trip to the continent on an ocean liner, and her subsequent journey to Paris are vague and a bit confusing. Perhaps because Rafaela is the kind of character readers want to know more about, the way Avery tells her story can leave many wanting to know more. There is a definite disconnect with Rafaela between the teenager she is supposed to be and the life she is leading; it is almost impossible to think of - or believe in - her as as teenager.Two other areas disappoint: one, the disappearance of Rafaela at a time in the narrative when the reader is just beginning to understand her better, and two, the excessive use of conversation in the novel to the detriment of the wonderful narrative description that Avery can write. Perhaps she can be forgiven for dropping Rafaela in order to focus more on de Lempicka, but many readers will feel their highest frustration level with all the chatty and very unnecessary patches of conversation inserted throughout the book.Despite some issues, Avery has produced highly enjoyable reading, recreated a time in history that always deserves special attention, and has made a major contribution to the literature of bisexuality. Because the author was able to accomplish so much, the weaker parts of the novel should not be at the forefront of any review. Avery will change and grow as a writer, and readers WILL remember this book.
    • 5/5
      In her novel, The Last Nude, Ellis Avery provides a vivid portrait of the Parisian art scene in the Jazz Age in a story featuring real people in intimate relationships with fictional characters. The narrator of most of the novel, Rafaela Fano, is apparently fictional but is probably suggested by the experiences and accounts of young women like her. She is an American teenager, half Italian and half Jewish in her ethnicity, who is sent by her family for an arranged marriage in Italy. Objecting, she escapes from the custody of her aunt/chaperone and jumps ship in Marseille, from whence she makes her way to Paris.She survives for a year, 1926-27, doing odd jobs and resorting to prostitution when she has no other option. Then she has a chance encounter with the artist Tamara de Lempicka, who is an historical figure, one of the most popular portrait painters of her generation, a prominent leader of Art Deco in the field of painting. The Polish-born but cosmopolitian Lempicka, a refugee from the Bolshevik Revolution, hires Rafaela as a model. Soon they are also lovers. Lempicka was apparently bisexual and was a champion of the erotic frontier as well as the avant garde in the arts.Rafaela falls in love wtih Lempicka, only to be devastated when she learns that the artist has been using her as a sexual plaything and inspiration for her art and career- but doesn't love her in return. While the affair lasts, Rafaela reveals her talent for clothing design and the craft of dress-making and she encounters Sylvia Beach, owner of the bookstore Shakespeare and Company, who championed James Joyce and published his Ulysses when no publisher in Britain or America would touch it. Rafaela is also intrigued to learn of the vibrant lesbian culture thriving in the Paris of Gertrude Stein.Avery does a marvelous job of evoking the heady world of the arts in the Paris of 1927, the city that helped nurture Hemingway and Picasso, Cocteau and Ravel. It was a place of both decadence and unmatched fertility for those casting off tradition and the artistic conventions evidently rendered obsolete and irrelavant by the Great War.The later chapters are told in the voice of Lempicka in her last months before her death in 1980. She has found herself living in Cuernavaca, living amongst other artistic expatriates from the Old World. Having married into the aristocracy, again (for her first husband was a Polish count who lost his wealth to the Bolsheviks) and achieved financial security and status as the Baroness Kuffner, she wisely recognized the rising Fascist threat in Europe in the 1930s and moved to America before the war.She arranged for the escape of her daughter, Kizette, from occupied France in 1941 and, apparently harboring some feeling, including guilt, for Rafaela, attempted to arrange her escape as well. But Rafaela seems to have rejected the offer, a memory that haunts Lempicka in her last days. A masterful novel, The Last Nude matches the power of fiction to the richness and tragedy of history.
    • 3/5
      The Last Nude is another example of taking a good story and stretching it to a novel. The story begins as Raphaela’s story and it is an enjoyable read. Ellis Avery lures the reader into Raphaela’s life and creates empathy for the character. The book was difficult to put down through the first chapters, then, in explicably Avery changes the novel to Tamara’s story. With the shift the book was no longer compelling. In fact, it became quite difficult to continue reading as not only was Tamara an unlikeable character, but, Avery’s writing style seemed to slip as well.
    • 3/5
      Fairly lightweight, sometimes a bit soap-opera-y, but fun enough if you like reading about the artist/expat world of 1920s Paris. Also, I thought she did a really good job of showing what people will do for money, and why, and making it very human and relatable.
    • 2/5
      I really did not like this book at all. I felt it lacked character development. It did not paint the picture of life in Paris for me, nor did it enlighten me as to the artist's perspective nor the model's. It was a great disapointment all in all, I'm sorry to say.
    • 4/5
      I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of The Last Nude by Ellis Avery as an early review winner and I am certainly glad I was chosen. Avery takes the reader in 1920s Paris and makes the reader almost believe they are indeed in Paris, through her descriptive and eloquent prose. The Last Nude is a look at what the relationship may have been between painter Tamara de Lempicka and her muse, Rafaela Fano. Avery drew me into this beautiful and complex story of love, deceit, art, and betrayal and I enjoyed almost every moment. I would not hesitate to recommend The Last Nude to those who enjoy historical fiction, art, or and exceptional work of prose.
    • 3/5
      the story of a 16 year old girl that is from a poor family in america, she runs away from an arranged marriage in Italy and ends up in Paris in the 1920's. by change she meets a woman arist and becomers her model. the first part of the novel is written from her pt. of view, the last part is written from the artist point of view, 60 years later. thera are good parts but overall I was disappointed
    • 4/5
      This book is at once enchanting and heartbreaking. I ironically read it at the right time, as I just finished reading The Paris Wife and A Moveable Feast, so I picked up right away on the fact that much of the background of the character Anson is taken from the life of Ernest Hemmingway. The author did a good job of weaving historical fact with the fiction of the story, following the two lives of an artist and her muse during the 20's in Paris and afteward as the artist looks back on her life. I think from the standpoint of a reader today, it is hard to understand - let alone side with - the artist due to the difference in her thinking brought about by her aristocratic background. The author does a good job though of providing her thought process for us to form our own decisions.
    • 5/5
      This lovely piece of historical fiction- fictionalized biography?- is based on the artist Tamara de Lempicka and one of her models, Rafaela Fano. Lempicka is considered an Art Deco painter, strongly influenced by Cubism but with her own unique take on it, creating vivid canvases that seemed to have life of their own. Fano posed for some of her most famous works. The first part of the book, in 1927, is told from Fano’s point of view; only in her mid-teens when she arrives in Paris, having escaped a plan to marry her off to a cousin who is a stranger to her, she is dirt poor, eking out a living by turning tricks. When Lempicka sees her in a park, she convinces her to go with her and pose nude. This begins an affair that surprises Fano; she’s never had sex with someone that she wanted to have sex with before, never done it for anything other than gain. Filled with actual desire for a person, Fano sees new possibilities in her life; having a steady paycheck for the first time, she also sees possibilities for a professional life as a couturier. She discovers she has options. But not only does she discover love for the first time, she also discovers heartbreak. Lempicki is beautiful, talented and brilliant, but she is a poor excuse for a human being. The second part, told from Lempicki’s point of view, leaps years ahead to her old age and her explanation of why she was such a grasping schemer. It attempts to redeem the image that both history and the novel have produced. It also gives a compact overview of how history has treated her work. The writing is compelling and I was drawn right in. Avery evokes the Jazz Age with deft strokes, making it appear before our eyes without going into long descriptive passages. It’s a lush, beautiful novel, filled with fashion, art, sex, and Paris in the Jazz Age.
    • 3/5
      When is a muse an inspiration and when is she a plaything? The distinction is hazy in Ellis Avery’s The Last Nude.1927 Paris, Rafaela only wants a hundred francs to buy a black dress so she can take over her flat mate’s department store job. In danger of falling into prostitution, she meets Tamara De Lempicka, painter of exotic, sexy Art Deco, and poses for several paintings.Although outside the parameters of what I usually read, this period piece is well written and sensual. The writer skillfully paints the decadent lifestyle of artists of the time. The passion of the two women grows as does their disparate outlooks on life. Characters are well defined. We grow to despise the self-centered, manipulative Lempicka and empathize with Rafaela’s lost naiveté. Readers will glimpse the artistic culture of 1920s Paris and enter the world of erotic lesbianism. The book ends with dangling threads as it suddenly abandons the women’s relationship to finish Lempicka’s story.Ellis Avery, inspired by a 1927 Lempicka oil painting called, Beautiful Rafaela, recreates their relationship in her second historical fiction novel. Another painting from their affair, The Dream is the cover art for the book. In an interview, Avery explains that Jazz Age Paris provided the “environment in which a number of different kinds of romantic and sexual relationships between women flourished in a way they rarely had before.” Ms. Avery took a weeklong intensive figure-painting class to learn what it’s like on the other side of the brush.Penguin’s Riverhead Books Division graciously supplied the advance review copy.
    • 3/5
      This novel had me hooked and reading at a fast pace. It tells the story of Rafaela Fano, a not quite eighteen year old girl living in Paris in the 1920's after having escaped from a trip to Italy and an arranged marriage. Rafaela supports herself through a couple of rich boyfriends and prostitution. She then meets the artist Tamara de Lempicka, who wants Rafaela to model for her. They then begin an affair, which for Rafaela is the first time she has slept with a woman but also the first time she has slept with anyone just because she wanted to. Tamara introduces Rafaela into her artistic circle of friends and the nudes she has painted of Rafaela get her into The Salon and get her a patron.Rafaela is alternately torn between jealousy of Tamara's past and the possibility of a future with her and creating her own career.But does Tamara want what Rafaela wants?I loved this book, based on real-life events of Tamara de Lempicka but I do not know how accurate it is. The writing was amazing and the setting fantastic. What can be better than Paris in the '20's and references and appearances by others from that period.I only gave the book 3 stars however. I took away one star because I am bothered by the fact that there is a character, Anson, who has life stories taken straight from Hemingway's own life (one part was how Hemingway's wife lost all of his work on a train) and from one of his characters. I thought maybe there would be some explanation later from Anson, that he made this stuff up. But there wasn't. Then I read an interview by the author where she states she wanted to create a character that would show what Hemingway might have become had he no longer been able to write after that train incident. That didn't sit with me. Anson was a smaller character that we never fully got to know, it didn't make sense to steal from Hemingway for that. It seems like plagiarism to me.The second star i took away was because of the ending. The last section fast forwards some 50 years later and is told from Tamara's point of view. It was long and rambling and did not at all fit with the rest of the book. It could have been cut out. Instead it ended a great novel with a bad taste in my mouth. That was worse than the Hemingway stuff.The author has potential but those 2 points were unacceptable to me.
    • 3/5
      The Last Nude is the story of Tamara de Lempicka, an Art Deco painter in Paris from the 1920s, and her muse Rafaela. Rafaela meets Lempicka while killing time before taking a new job as a shopgirl. She agrees to model for Lempicka, and her new career (and love affair) begins. This is not a light novel. I wasn't able to read more than 30 pages at a time. It's not that the prose was a difficult slog, but rather the subject matter was so dark. Lempicka was a temperamental, mercurial artist. She could be incredibly loving or incredibly cruel, sometimes in the same breath. She was brilliant, but a difficult character to love.Rafaela's life was the most troublesome. Avery does an excellent job of exposing the ephemeral life of Paris party girls. Rafaela and her roommate Gin live lives of glitz and glamour, on the surface. Gin has a boyfriend in the banking industry, Rafaela has no trouble getting dates with wealthy fellas. But when told from Rafaela's viewpoint, the life of glitz and glamour isn't quite so sparkly. Rafaela escaped an arranged marriage that would have forced her to toil as a poor housewife while producing child after child, but in order to escape that life she was forced to prostitute herself. This man took her to Paris and set her up with a place to stay, money, and magnificent dinners and parties. But everything comes with a cost. Rafaela is passed from man to man, trying to keep herself fed and sheltered. She has to sell her expensive gifts to make ends meet. She sleeps in coatrooms at the Ritz so her roommate can entertain male callers in the hopes that someday one of them will marry her. Rafaela has to have sex with lecherous old men and snotty young men who try to mold her into what they want her to be. Rafaela is never allowed to be her own person. Until she meet Lempicka.When she begins her affair with the artist, Rafaela can finally thrive as a person. She no longer has to prostitute herself, she has ready money, and she can finally just be alone with her own time. But her new life as an artist's muse is not idyllic. She must face Lempicka's increasingly mercurial attitudes, long absences, and jealousy after they become lovers. Rafaela finally feels herself an equal in an affair, but Lempicka's cruelty is a difficult price to pay. Soon Rafaela loses herself again, this time in love. There are some memorable erotic scenes in this novel, so it may not be suitable for younger audiences.Rafaela's lesbian affair with Lempicka also draws her into the secret world of Paris' queer culture. She befriends the owner of an independent bookstore, Sylvia, who publishes James Joyce in France, and she becomes an observer of the alternative lifestyles available to women. This is an engaging novel, but ultimately a troubling one. If you're looking for something light, this is not it. Be prepared to confront the dark side of human emotion and experience. The most poignant love affairs do not have happy endings.
    • 3/5
      I liked "The Last Nude", but I did not love it. On the positive side, Avery's prose and descriptive abilities were great -- she painted beautiful images and scenes. I am also grateful to have been introduced to the life and mostly-wonderful art of Tamara de Lempicka. That said, the protagonist (la belle Rafaela) seemed far older and more worldly than any 17-year-old girl I have come across. However beautiful, she seemed more like a Superwoman cartoon in her thinking and motivations than a real person. But maybe that's just me -- and, in any case, I still rooted for her. In the category of historical fiction, though, other recent books ("Parrot and Olivier in America" by Peter Carrey, and "As Meat Loves Salt" by Maria McCann) have transported me in a more profound and memorable fashion.
    • 4/5
      In the golden age of 1920's Paris, wealth radiates off the streets. Gertrude Stein holds lavish salons, the Shakespeare & Co. bookshop hosts expatriates and aspiring novelists such as James Joyce, and painter Tamara de Lempicka prepares to create her greatest masterpieces.It is this world that the reader, and our main character of Rafaela Fano is thrown into. Struggling and desperate, Rafaela - a young girl who has recently run away to Paris rather than marry against her will - reluctantly agrees to let a mysterious, dazzling woman paint her nude. This woman turns out to be Lempicka, a Polish Art Deco artist.Rafaela goes from model to muse to lover, and falls deeply in love with the glamorous older woman. This book was well written and lovely reading. Avery has a lovely way of describing things. For example, "The soft morning air was lush as cream..." (page 59). Her characters become real, especially Tamara herself.At her betrayal, I felt as stung and hurt as Rafaela did.The only fault I could find with this book was that I wish it had described more of the Parisian 1920's - a time period that I find fascinating. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      This well-written book tells the story of Rafaela, a seventeen-year-old American who ran away to Paris and who is surviving doing whatever she needs to get by when she meets the painter Tamara de Lempicka in the Bois de Boulogne. Rafaela soon becomes her model and lover. As she learns to navigate the ambiguous waters of the Parisian art world in the 1920s, she grows up a bit and finds uncertain love. Avery has created a vivid picture of a specific place at a specific time. I've read a fair amount about the literary scene in Paris at that time and was eager to expand into the art world. And it was interesting; Tamara de Lempicka was a fascinating and controversial woman in her time, a serious and bi-sexual artist at a time when most women were restricted to the role of supportive wife and mother. The fictitious character of Rafaela is well developed; she combines the insecurity of a teen-ager with the strength of will to run away and dream of something better. She's fascinated with fashion and so the book also provides a look at how women dressed then. On the negative side, the historical characters were muddied by the characters who were fictional but obviously based on historical figures. For example, Sylvia Beach is herself in the book, but there is a fictional character who plays an important role in the book who is obviously based on Ernest Hemingway and some of the characters from his books. Rafaela was partially based on Suzy Solidor, an entertainer who had a liaison with de Lempicka, but Suzy Solidor also appeared as herself in the book. So, while much of the book was based on historical figures and adhered closely to what is known about their lives, it also diverged in unnecessary ways. Still, it provides an atmospheric look at a unique place and time and as long as the reader does not rely on this novel for their facts, it is an enjoyable and worthwhile read.