Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg

Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg –336 pages and Audio

ARC from Scribner in exchange for an honest review.

Book Blurb:

Feast Your Eyes, framed as the catalogue notes from a photography show at the Museum of Modern Art, tells the life story of Lillian Preston: “America’s Worst Mother, America’s Bravest Mother, America’s Worst Photographer, or America’s Greatest Photographer, depending on who was talking.” After discovering photography as a teenager through her high school’s photo club, Lillian rejects her parents’ expectations of college and marriage and moves to New York City in 1955. When a small gallery exhibits partially nude photographs of Lillian and her daughter Samantha, Lillian is arrested, thrust into the national spotlight, and targeted with an obscenity charge. Mother and daughter’s sudden notoriety changes the course of both of their lives and especially Lillian’s career as she continues a life-long quest for artistic legitimacy and recognition.
Narrated by Samantha, Feast Your Eyes reads as a collection of Samantha’s memories, interviews with Lillian’s friends and lovers, and excerpts from Lillian’s journals and letters—a collage of stories and impressions, together amounting to an astounding portrait of a mother and an artist dedicated, above all, to a vision of beauty, truth, and authenticity.

My Review: 4.5 stars

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Feast Your Eyes is a book that will stick with me forever as it has altered the way I  view photography. I was introduced to Goldberg’s writing back in 2000 with Bee Season, and haven’t read anything of hers since. Something about this title and cover intrigued me and I was so glad to receive a copy from Scribner.

Honestly, I began reading this book, was totally hooked, and for whatever reason that I completely don’t recall, it got put aside. I saw it was available on audio so I picked up where I left off and was completely riveted. Huge kudos to the narrators who blew me away with their cadence and tone. This book reads in letters, diary entries and articles so one would think an audio version wouldn’t work, but alas, it did so beautifully.

Initially, this book brought on reminders of Dani Shapiro’s Black and White, which inexplicably is not up on my website. Goldberg takes this theme of mother photographer and daughter subject to a whole new level. Lillian’s role of photographer usurps her roles parent, friend and partner. She’s deeply committed  to the truth photography represents and somehow the reader can visualize every picture described. How this affects her daughter, Samantha, as a child, teen and adult, fluctuates as the novel progresses.

This book is more than just photography; I assure you. Everything from women’s rights, the legal system, consent, abortion, stages of death, relationships and family. Never did I imagine a book predicated on photography could inspire such a powerful and eloquent book. Truly a life described through a camera lens. Brava!

Quotes I liked:

Once you can read, you can no longer open a book and see a jumble of letters; after you get to know someone’s face, you can’t see her as a stranger.”

“It’s funny how you don’t see something until you have to.”

“Sometimes the people you’d expect to be important drift past like clouds, while the seemingly random types end up changing everything.”