Oliver Fischer, a self-styled bohemian, boardwalk caricaturist, and student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, enrages his banker father and earns the contempt of Philadelphia’s foremost realist painter Thomas Eakins when he attempts to stage Manet’s scandalous painting The Luncheon on the Grass. Soon after, he is ensnarled, along with Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie, in a clash between the Anti-Imperialist League and their expansionist foes. Sent to Key West to sketch the 1898 American invasion of Cuba, in company with war correspondent Stephen Crane, he realizes––in the flash of a naval bombardment––that our lives are suspended by a thread between radiance and annihilation.
I usually don’t include the official blurb of a book in my reviews, but I am here because this one paragraph basically tells you the entire plot of The Caricaturist by Norman Lock. That statement is no hyperbole. That’s really all that happens! I went into this book thinking I would get an interesting account of an artist war correspondent covering the now little known 1898 American invasion of Cuba. In truth, the main character Oliver Fischer does not even make it to Key West until about 80% into the book.
Being from Philly, it was fun to read descriptions of the city and be able to orient myself on the streets the characters walked and the landmarks they passed. Logistically, Lock got things mostly accurate–except there was mention of Chinatown starting around 6th St. To my knowledge, Chinatown has historically never extended to 6th street, but started around 9th/10th which is where is remains today.
To be honest, not much happened in this book which made reading it a bit of a slog. I considered DNFing it a few times, but figured I’d push through hoping we’d get to the action of Cuba. In reality, the majority of the book follows Oliver and his friends bumbling around Philadelphia eating, drinking, drawing, and briefly getting caught up in anti-Imperialist protests. There were some humorous moments, but for the entirely of the book I was just waiting for something to happen to propel the plot forward. I suppose I felt this way because the stakes weren’t high. Oliver is relatively privileged and although his father threatened to cut him off financially if he continued bumbling about with his “frivolous sketching,” I never really got the impression that Oliver was ever in any danger of succumbing to dire circumstances. By the time we get to the precipice of action in Key West 80% into the book, the story pretty much abruptly ends before Oliver even gets Cuba to become an artist war correspondent!
The Caricaturist will be released July 2, 2024
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