Review

Ellie, a painter, has just won a huge art award. She’s not sure that this is so great. She’s not sure about many things and has a fairly cynical and detached way of living her life. She decides that her next work will be portraits of all her exes, so she starts getting back in touch with them all. Along the way she learns more about them, about art and about herself.

*

That’s a pretty boring sounding synopsis, but this debut novel is actually quite good to read: very funny and at times wise, never sentimental, thank goodness. I highlighted many parts. If you like ideas, art and humour, this is the book for you. At times the narrative style seems a little stilted –debut novelist style – and it’s not immersive. You always feel a little detached from it, which is typical for clever and funny books. There’s also a fair bit of satire – of the art world, streamers and rich corporate types – which I enjoyed, but also a real love of art and poetry. The ending is fine, but could have been a little more powerful. Endings are so hard to stick.

A good read – I would definitely read more by this author. Lots of laughs, but also very thoughtful. Not sure that I would put it in the school library though, now that related texts are a thing of the past. If I did, it would certainly be in senior fiction. 320 pp.

Also: very cool cover. I’ve read a few books with that style of cover recently.

Some quotes from the beginning of the book (I highlighted heaps, but obviously can’t include them all here):

• “Did Ellie want to be a painter? Yes, absolutely; that had been exactly what she had wanted her whole life. Did Ellie want to be perceived? No, not for a single second, ever, under any circumstances.”
• “Ellie had long ago decided that everybody always ended up playing ever-diminishing cover versions of who they wanted to be at sixteen.”
• “In fact, though she wouldn’t waste an insight like this on someone like Martin, this was what she truly loved about painting. In order to be a good painter, you really had to look at things. That might be all it took.”
• “His to-be wife, Ovid, didn’t answer the celebrant. Not with words, anyway. Instead, she drew her arms back and forth, her eyes shut, swaying like a tree. Oh that’s right, Ellie remembered. Ovid was a performance artist.”
• “‘Artists have been in crisis ever since the photograph came in. Most of us are jealous that we’re not iPhones.'”

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Plenty of swears; relationship & marriage break ups; infidelity (minor characters); uni lecturer & student sexual relationships (mostly backstory); sexual content, but mostly fairly vague; main & minor relationships are wlw and mlw. Story moves in a positive direction.

*

Earp, J. (2025). Painting portraits of everyone I’ve ever dated. Pantera Press.

Images and quotes are used on this blog post under the “Fair dealing for criticism or review” provision of the Commonwealth Copyright Act, 1968.

I read this novel via Libby — support your local library!