Seeing Soriah by Ivan Jenson (Kindle only, pub date 4/25/12)
“All art is dead. It only lives in our imagination, we the living.”
From artist, poet, and novelist Ivan Jenson comes a psychological thriller about revenge and family secrets.
Seeing Soriah is a story about a man haunted by the sins of his father. Jordan is an art dealer who left his life in New York behind to be with his elderly father in Michigan. His father, Harold, is an artist, and Jordan is pooling all his efforts into opening a retrospective exhibit of his father’s art. Shortly before the defining moment in his career, Harold confides in his son that he has been seeing a woman who resembles his dead first wife. Knowing that his father has a history of mental illness, Jordan wonders if his father is experiencing a mental break…until he starts seeing the same woman. This event causes Jordan to dig into his family’s past, and uncover a secret his father has kept hidden for fifty years.
Last summer I reviewed Jenson’s first novel Dead Artist. And while I found that book to be enjoyable, I was much more impressed by this book. Seeing Soriah is suspenseful and disturbing, and a more mature and multi-layered story than Dead Artist. It’s a book about secrets and lies, with a touch of satire thrown in. While the main plot by itself is quite interesting, what I enjoyed even more was the commentary about art and the life of an artist. Toward the end of the book, Jordan and his father disagree about whether an artist’s life is worth more than the art he creates. It’s a compelling question that stayed with me long after I had finished reading the book.
Seeing Soriah is an excellent follow-up to Dead Artist, and a compact but very interesting novel. Great for anyone who’s into indie authors and stories that are a little out of the ordinary.
