“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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“Lock successfully mimics Crane’s impressionistic style in his marvelous depictions of late 19th-century America.”
Publishers Weekly
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“Lock expertly provides readers, in the end, with a peek into a lost time wherein, much like the present, America holds its breath.”
PopMatters
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“The Caricaturist is fully immersed in the war fury of the era, and does a fine job visualizing it.”
On the Seawall
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“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)
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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.
Shelf Unbound “Recommended Reading” selection
Foreword Reviews “Book of the Day” selection
Literary Hub “New Books” selection
