Annunciation CL

In contemporary England, New York, Italy and Moscow, a cast of expatriates seeks meaning and communion as they explore mysteries of art and everyday life in this provocative but uneven work. Claire O'Connel is an American art historian in London researching a thesis on Renaissance artist Pietro Testa. When her 16-year-old daughter Rachel is raped and impregnated, Claire acquiesces to the girl's decision to bear the child and rededicates herself to bolstering Rachel's will to live. This goal becomes intertwined with her search for an undocumented Testa painting of the Annunciation, which takes the two women to Lucca, Italy. Claude Ricard, an art book editor for a Manhattan publisher, is saddened by death in his extended family and disillusioned after an ill-fated affair. He accepts a transfer to London, where he finds a new companion, Maurice, an elderly man born in prerevolutionary Russia. These two eventually meet Claire and Rachel and are drawn into their search for the Testa Annunciation, which takes them all to Moscow. Plante ( The Foreigner ) peoples his imaginative tale with rich characterizations and writes with genuine insight into the mixture of faith, understanding and heritage that shapes our reasons for living. In his characters' frequent moments of epiphany, however, his otherwise engaging narrative waxes jarringly melodramatic, turning the potentially sublime into the merely overblown. (May)