Introduction

"A profoundly original, beautifully written work, so emotionally accurate that it tears at the heart. I read it without stopping."-Gerald Stern

Sophie Marks' path to artistic and personal fulfillment takes her from World War II England to postwar Paris and the Italian countryside. She leaves Europe in 1967 and spends the next two decades in the American Southwest. Acclaimed at last as an artist, she returns to England to confront the hidden memories of her childhood and test the possibilities of a renewed love, a passion ripened by maturity.

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Excerpt

Sophie was painting again. She needed to hone her skills; like a musician, like any artist, she needed to practice. She was easing her grandfather’s style out of her technique of painting — his colors, his dark lines, his people’s faces imbued with their rural lives – all giving way to her own style. Her colors were becoming muted, the edges gentler, as if her hand was moving in slow motion; she was reminded of the blurred photograph of her father.

Torn between the conventional, almost stoic Renaissance form she had used for the soldier and the emotional approach of Soutine, which was more her grandfather’s style, Sophie eventually, after worrying experimentation, wove the genres together. She began to hire models. Like her grandfather, Sophie was interested not in pretty people, but in people with the world in their eyes. After the war they were certainly easy enough to find: in soup kitchens, sleeping in doorways, sweeping the streets. It was not difficult to hire subjects with the promise of a few francs, a carafe of red wine, and a pot of hot soup on the stove.

She was moved to paint the moisture that was pooling at the corners of an old woman’s hungry mouth. She painted the expressive fear in a man’s eyes, using a modeled black, with highlights of zinc white; she painted the benevolence that a charwoman was revealing toward an unfair world, not using black at all, but instead a burnt sienna to tone down the emotion. They spoke to her while she painted. Their stories, their opinions, their dreams — all helped Sophie construct their portraits. She did not mind their moving out of their poses; this showed her more about them, allowing her to capture intimate angles of their emotional characters.

Sophie no longer thought about the calamity of Paul Ribard, nor was she any longer aware of a desire to dig René out of the ashes of Paris. But André’s head still appeared on the shoulders of little boys. Her guilt about not heeding Eli — not sending André to safety — weighed upon her at times to such an extent that she was rendered wretched with heart pain view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. Broken Colors is a novel punctuated by a speckling of quotes from famous authors and writers. Do the quotes help develop the theme of the novel?

2. What is the correlation between travel and age in this novel? Does Sophie’s constant relocating match her shifting emotional landscape, and are the two inextricably tied? Is Sophie in Paris different then Sophie in the American Southwest?

3. If Sophie’s grandfather hadn’t taught her to paint, would she have turned to art as a necessary form of expression?

4. Early in the novel, Sophie meets a fellow painter, Major Roderick, whose face is
grotesquely disfigured with partial vision. What is the significance of this character at that point in Sophie’s journey?

5. What was your reaction when Sophie first met Luca? Is it important that they’re both artists?

6. How do you feel about setting art against the backdrop of war and loss? Does it make art feel like a more vital human resource?

7. On page 230, Sophie explains what the term ‘broken colors’ means? Do you think the book is aptly titled? Is this a strong metaphor for Sophie’s life?

8. As a reader, were you rooting for the character of Luca to return to Sophie’s life? Were you surprised by his re-introduction in the latter part of the novel?

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