The one that really stumped me though was the appearance of Maxfield Parrish's Daybreak, as the Parrish print in the text is the novel's smoking gun. This is what the gorgeous print looks like:
But then the text describes the scene differently: Lacey points to the painting and tells the narrator Daniel that her grandmother was a woman named Kitty Owen, who "was eighteen when she took off all her clothes for him and posed." Which then means that the "grandmother" has to be the figure standing up, since the figure lying down is clothed. She goes on to say that the now 92-year-old no longer has the red hair and the narrator Daniel writes, "I looked at the slender, pale girl on the cover of the book, who looked like a faun standing over an idyllic pool trimmed in iridescent tiles." From all that, I deduced that the unnamed painting in the book was just made-up since the standing figure isn't pale with red hair or standing over a pool or even "arching up, and facing the twilight" as the chapter ends with. And fine, this is a work of fiction; I accept this. But, but...then I found out Kitty Owen was a real woman who posed for Maxfield Parrish. So shouldn't it be a description of the painting featured in the book? I am confused.And apparently, I am the only person confused. I tried googling this, but the only thing that popped up was middling reviews for this book (though interestingly, an Object of Beauty has 44 five-star reviews on Amazon, compared to a combined 30 one- and two-star reviews.) So, yup, perhaps I am way over-thinking this...though if anyone has a thought, I'm all ears.
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