A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice

“Instead of straight history, A Vast Horizon takes the ingenious form of a scrapbook or collage, alternating evocative descriptions of photos and paintings with capsule profiles of the figures they depict and the artists who made them. It’s an approach befitting the book’s subjects — most of them Surrealists, after all — and enhanced by the author’s keen eye and loose-limbed prose."

 

– Emily Eakin, The New York Times Book Review

“One of those multi-character true stories that scratch the “I should have been born in a different generation” itch. In this case, the generation is lost, but the characters are brilliant: Picasso, Man Ray, Dora Maar, Lee Miller.”

– Kate Tuttle, the Boston Globe

"Drawing on letters, memoirs, artworks and hundreds of photos, Thomasson captures the creative and sexual ferment of the group of talented free spirits — Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar, Man Ray, the photographer Lee Miller and the poet Paul Éluard among them — who took over the hotel in the summer of 1937, in an exuberant last gasp of artistic abandon as World War II loomed."

– The New York Times Book Review

“British biographer Thomasson creates a vibrant portrait of an international group of artists, as well as their lovers and friends, who lived and worked in France just before and during World War II. As she creates capsule biographies of each individual, Thomasson explores themes of friendship and creativity, love, and desire. Structuring her book as a “collage,” she juxtaposes biographical fragments, letters, and descriptions to create the portrait of an age in which artists ardently believed that “acts of creativity were a powerful weapon in the fight for freedom.” A vivid cultural history.”

– Kirkus Reviews

“Thomasson convincingly draws out the destabilizing effects of wartime on artists’ lives and work, offering insights into the interplay between art, life, and political uncertainty during a volatile age.”

– Publishers Weekly

“Beginning with a single, tantalizing photograph, Anna Thomasson weaves a fascinating story around nine figures in the Surrealist movement. Beautifully told, wonderfully interesting and hugely informative."

– David Boyd Haycock, author of Brilliant Destiny: The Age of Augustus John

“A brilliant and engrossing book. Anna Thomasson prowls around her extraordinary group of artists, poets, and models with the subtle skill of a documentary maker. It's a triumph.”

– Miranda Seymour, author of Mary Shelley

“At once intimate and expansive, A Vast Horizon layers real upon surreal to build a fascinating portrait of art, war and life.”

– Clare Mulley, author of Agent Zo

Praise for Anna Thomasson’s A Curious Friendship:

“Tells the story of two wonderfully unlikely friends and allies during the years between the wars. Moving, thoughtful, entertaining and magnificently researched, Thomasson's account of a bohemian art student and sharp-witted—sometimes comically snobbish—spinster is an outstandingly accomplished and original first biography from a writer for whom we can predict a very bright future.”­—

– Miranda Seymour, author of In My Father's House and Noble Endeavours

“History in which deep ocean currents flow through individual lives. A compelling read.”

– Michael Bird, author of This Is Tomorrow: Twentieth-Century Britain and its Artists

“At once intimate and expansive, A Vast Horizon layers real upon surreal to build a fascinating portrait of art, war and life.”

– Clare Mulley, author of Agent Zo

“At once intimate and expansive, A Vast Horizon layers real upon surreal to build a fascinating portrait of art, war and life.”

– Clare Mulley, author of Agent Zo

“Thomasson has uncovered a remarkable story and brings these two fascinating but forgotten figures and their brilliant world vividly to light. An impressive debut.”

– Julie Kavanagh, author of Secret Muses: The Life of Fredrick Ashton and Nureyev

“Beginning with a single, tantalizing photograph, Anna Thomasson weaves a fascinating story around nine figures in the Surrealist movement. Beautifully told, wonderfully interesting and hugely informative."

– David Boyd Haycock, author of Brilliant Destiny: The Age of Augustus John

“An enviable lightness of touch. This chapter in the history of human and artistic relations has never been better recounted.”

– Andrew Lambirth, co-author of A Look at My Life

“A brilliant and engrossing book. Anna Thomasson prowls around her extraordinary group of artists, poets, and models with the subtle skill of a documentary maker. It's a triumph.”

– Miranda Seymour, author of Mary Shelley

“Provides a window on to a fascinating world, and the story is narrated with elegant verve. Part of the interest lies in the enticing cast that quickly gathers in and around Daye House. But most of all, the interest—even the suspense—of Thomasson’s account comes from the central relationship itself. The curiousness of the relationship leaves the reader eager to know what will transpire. And Thomasson is an excellent guide, ready to answer the most difficult questions, but reluctant to judge or to simplify.”

– Laura Feigel, The Gaurdian

“Rex Whistler—this book’s ‘bright young thing’—was an artist of the 1920s and 1930s, and Edith Olivier, the ‘bluestocking’, was a novelist. They both deserve to be more famous than they are, and Anna Thomasson’s absorbing joint biography will doubtless make them so . . . [their] curious friendship, beautifully reconstructed here from their mountains of letters and Edith’s voluminous diaries.”

– The Spectator

"Part dual biography, part social history, part study of the circles within which Olivier and Whistler moved, A Curious Friendship charts the ebb and flow of their relationship and their interconnected histories. Thomasson . . . articulates with great sensitivity the uneasiness triggered in their relationship by the contrast between Edith’s single existence and Rex’s tumultuous romantic preoccupations with both men and women."

– The Telegraph

“An odd couple bound by celibate chemistry. Thomasson's biography is . . . sympathetic, and often fascinating in the connections of the people she portrays.”

– The Independent

“I loved A Curious Friendship. Anna Thomasson, in her first book, has brilliantly captured this strange coterie.”

– Roy Strong, author of The Story of Britain

“A vibrant, admirably researched debut, tinkling with famous artistic names. A sort of non-fictional Brideshead Revisited, it's piquantly evocative of that lost aesthetic echelon of 1920s & 1930s society which dissolved amid the shadows of war; and the convention-defying friendship threaded through it is enthralling.”

– Caroline Sanderson, associate editor of The Bookseller

“Thomasson is a wonderful writer, with a pitch-perfect ear and a marvellous sense of style. I was also impressed by the thoroughness of her research. I really felt she had come to know her characters intimately with the result that one completely trusted her judgment every inch of the way. She has, too, a brilliant visual sense so that one really sees Rex's paintings and those magnificent houses.”

– Selina Hastings, author of The Red Earl and The Secret Lives od Somerset Maugham

Praise for Anna Thomasson’s A Curious Friendship:

“Tells the story of two wonderfully unlikely friends and allies during the years between the wars. Moving, thoughtful, entertaining and magnificently researched, Thomasson's account of a bohemian art student and sharp-witted—sometimes comically snobbish—spinster is an outstandingly accomplished and original first biography from a writer for whom we can predict a very bright future.”­—

– Miranda Seymour, author of In My Father's House and Noble Endeavours

“Thomasson has uncovered a remarkable story and brings these two fascinating but forgotten figures and their brilliant world vividly to light. An impressive debut.”

– Julie Kavanagh, author of Secret Muses: The Life of Fredrick Ashton and Nureyev

“Provides a window on to a fascinating world, and the story is narrated with elegant verve. Part of the interest lies in the enticing cast that quickly gathers in and around Daye House. But most of all, the interest—even the suspense—of Thomasson’s account comes from the central relationship itself. The curiousness of the relationship leaves the reader eager to know what will transpire. And Thomasson is an excellent guide, ready to answer the most difficult questions, but reluctant to judge or to simplify.”

– Laura Feigel, The Gaurdian

“Rex Whistler—this book’s ‘bright young thing’—was an artist of the 1920s and 1930s, and Edith Olivier, the ‘bluestocking’, was a novelist. They both deserve to be more famous than they are, and Anna Thomasson’s absorbing joint biography will doubtless make them so . . . [their] curious friendship, beautifully reconstructed here from their mountains of letters and Edith’s voluminous diaries.”

– The Spectator

"Part dual biography, part social history, part study of the circles within which Olivier and Whistler moved, A Curious Friendship charts the ebb and flow of their relationship and their interconnected histories. Thomasson . . . articulates with great sensitivity the uneasiness triggered in their relationship by the contrast between Edith’s single existence and Rex’s tumultuous romantic preoccupations with both men and women."

– The Telegraph