Life Class, Montreal writer Ann Charney’s fourth novel, tells the story of Nerina, a young woman from Sarajevo who, in response to the violence that swept over the disintegrating Yugoslavia, dreams of a life in America. We follow Nerina on her journey from Venice to Montreal within the contemporary high-art world, a mildly unsavory community that she must learn to negotiate, and the object of Charney’s satire. Life Class belongs to the large and rapidly growing literature of displacement, although the contemporary art world is a far cry from the stinking meat-packing district of Chicago where, in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, earlier Eastern European immigrants made their way.
Nerina is serious, sensible, and capable. She is both a self-starter and a good pupil, and attracts people who teach her how to get on, providing a life class in its first meaning. She gets...
Roger Seamon is a retired member of the Department of English at the University of British Columbia who has written on literary theory and the philosophy of art. He is an honourary research associate at the University of New Brunswick.
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