Captivating and energetic. . . . The Caricaturist rollicks through a turbulent American epoch via an artist’s coming-of-age.

— Foreword Reviews (starred review)
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The Caricaturist

by Norman Lock

Oliver Fischer, a self-styled bohemian, boardwalk caricaturist, and student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, enrages his banker father and earns the contempt of Philadelphia’s foremost realist painter Thomas Eakins when he attempts to stage Manet’s scandalous painting The Luncheon on the Grass. Soon after, he is ensnarled, along with Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie, in a clash between the Anti-Imperialist League and their expansionist foes. Sent to Key West to sketch the 1898 American invasion of Cuba, in company with war correspondent Stephen Crane, he realizes––in the flash of a naval bombardment––that our lives are suspended by a thread between radiance and annihilation.

The Caricaturist, the penultimate, stand-alone book in The American Novels series, is a tragicomic portrait of America struggling to honor its most-cherished ideals at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Historical Novels Review “Editors’ Choice” selection

Shelf Unbound “Recommended Reading” selection

Foreword Reviews “Book of the Day” selection

Literary Hub “New Books” selection

cover image of The Caricaturist

Ebook

ISBN
9781954276284

Paperback

ISBN
9781954276277

Related:

Norman Lock shares the story behind The Caricaturist and his American Novels cycle with Foreword Reviews.

Preview The Caricaturist in Shelf Unbound.

Norman Lock

portrait of Norman Lock
Charles Giraudet

Norman Lock is the award-winning author of the dozen volumes in The American Novels series, as well as other novels, short fiction, poetry, and stage and radio plays. He has won The Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award, The Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, and has been longlisted twice for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. He has also received writing fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey.

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Praise for The Caricaturist

Lock is not writing history, but his fiction acts as a sort of carapace around actual events and historical figures, showing how a Twain or Crane appear from the protagonist’s perspective. . . . Oliver Fischer does not become another Crane, but without Crane’s fortitude in covering wars and the urban down-and-out, Oliver could not embark on a quest that his unconventional father cannot fathom.

— New York Sun

The Caricaturist, contrasting the larger-than-life figure of Stephen Crane with the more modest Oliver Fischer, is both comic and tragic, and Lock’s picture of Philadelphia in the late 1890s is vivid and enchanting, impressive in its detail. . . . A delightful picaresque novel.

— North of Oxford

The Caricaturist is fully immersed in the war fury of the era, and does a fine job visualizing it.

— On the Seawall

Lock expertly provides readers, in the end, with a peek into a lost time wherein, much like the present, America holds its breath.

— PopMatters

A resonant story of art, rebellion, and politics.

— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A masterfully written book that brings light to America’s almost-forgotten first imperialist adventure.

— Historical Novels Review (Editors' Choice)

Lock again demonstrates his uncanny ability to inhabit the voices of historical figures. . . . He is our most assured portraitist.

— Booklist

Lock successfully mimics Crane’s impressionistic style in his marvelous depictions of late 19th-century America.

— Publishers Weekly

Norman Lock has already presented us with an engaging series of stand-alone historical reveals unlike any other writer’s work that I’ve seen. . . . [He] has an amazing literary gift and I am so grateful he has chosen to share it with us through his writing!

— Linda Bond, Auntie’s Bookstore (Spokane, WA)