Blood Water Paint Book Review by Joy McCullough

Written By Joy McCullough

Published by Dutton Books for Young Readers in 2018

ISBN 978-0735232112

Plot Summary: This book is set in the 1600's with a girl named Artemisia who lives with her father Orazio. She is a wonderful painter but her father takes credit for all the work that she does. Her father decides that she is needs some help with her art so he enlists a man named Agostino to tutor her. She isn't comfortable with him but decides to follow her father's wishes.  Tino takes advantage of the relationship and assaults Artemisia. He leaves but then shows up like nothing happened and when she tells Tino that she is done with their teacher student relationship Tino rapes her. She doesn't tell her father because she knows that she will be blamed and then possibly forced to marry him. She tells her father but he says nothing can be done so she becomes an advocate for herself and those who have also suffered like she has. 

Critical Analysis: This book being written in verse makes it very powerful for readers as they can feel the emotions throughout the story that Artemisia goes through. She is strong independent female that has a great gift for painting just like everyone has a knack for something in their lives. This books shows that women are valued and even when horrific things happen that sometimes you can make those horrific things turn into something that can be used for good. The author's writing style brings a flood of emotions so be sure to have kleenex handy as you might tear up several times like I did. 

Review: Baroque artist and feminist icon Artemisia Gentileschi is given voice in a debut verse novel.

Only 17, Artemisia is already a more gifted painter than her feckless father. But in 17th-century Rome, the motherless girl is only grudgingly permitted to grind pigment, prepare canvas, and complete commissions under his signature. So when the charming Agostino Tassi becomes her tutor, Artemisia is entranced by the only man to take her work seriously…until he resorts to rape. At first broken in body and spirit, she draws from memories of her mother’s stories of the biblical heroines Susanna and Judith the strength to endure and fight back the only way she can. Artemisia tells her story in raw and jagged blank verse, sensory, despairing, and defiant, interspersed with the restrained prose of her mother’s subversive tales. Both simmer with impotent rage at the injustices of patriarchal oppression, which in the stories boils over into graphic sexual assault and bloody vengeance. While the poems (wisely) avoid explicitly depicting either Artemisia’s rape or subsequent judicial torture, the searing aftermath, physical and mental, is agonizingly portrayed. Yet Artemisia’s ferocious passion to express herself in paint still burns most fiercely. Unfortunately, those who lack familiarity with the historical facts or context may emerge from this fire scorched but not enlightened. McCullough’s Rome is a white one. A brief note in the backmatter offers sexual-violence resources

Nonetheless, an incandescent retelling both timeless and, alas, all too timely. (afterword) (Historical fiction. 14-adult)

Connections: Depending on the age of students, they can find ways to help volunteer with people who have been the victims of assault and violence. This website has a lot of good information for those who have been through it. https://www.nsvrc.org/

More books by Joy McCullough 

Not Starring Zadie Louise ISBN 978-1534496248

Enter the Body ISBN 978-0593406755

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