Although his virtuoso paintbrush wielding links the look of the paintings - hyper-real images of unreality - each is different from the one that precedes it. A huge sci-fi painting is titled Böcklin's Tomb (after Chris Foss) (1998) turn the corner and a Fragonard child with De Kooning flesh, Disco (1997-98), stares across the room at an Auerbach portrait, Bertrand Russell at the BBC (1999), which looks as if it was pulled out from beneath a steam roller.īut this isn't a group show - every one of the 19 paintings, two sculptures and two photographs is by Glenn Brown. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternate selections TV rights optioned by Citadel Entertainment.At first glance this looks like a group show curated by someone tripping so high they got the labels wrong: an exquisite little Rembrandt called I Lost My heart to a Starship Trooper (1996) is hung near the Böcklin-esque Zombies of the Stratosphere (1999). The highwire-walking plot eventually falls off line, but Auerbach's urgent prose keeps the entertainment from flagging even then. Throughout, readers are treated to an intricate and intriguing tour of family law at its most unjust and, when Rosie puts all the pieces together, to a paranoid scenario worthy of Oliver Stone. Rosie's ER paramour, meanwhile, seems unconcerned about Jason's deteriorating health. During the proceedings, the court takes Jason away from Rosie, forbidding all contact, placing the child first with Quinn and then in a foster family after Quinn allows Rosie to see the boy.

A smug social worker inexplicably agrees that the charge is warranted, and so Rosie must go to court, all the while wondering whether Quinn or Diana, or both, instigated her troubles. The plot thickens when someone-whose identity is shielded by law-makes a claim to the Department of Children and Families that Rosie neglects Jason. But Quinn has a new, young girlfriend, Diana, while Rosie is dating the ER doctor who treats Jason.

The diagnosis of their son, Jason, as an asthmatic and the attacks that send him to the local ER have recently brought the couple back into each other's lives. Here, it's charges of child neglect and abuse, not of kidnapping, that face Rosie Sloan, who's separated from her husband, police officer Quinn. In a premise similar to that of her last novel, Sleep, Baby, Sleep, a mother plunged into dire legal trouble over her alleged mistreatment of her young child is at the center of Auerbach's harrowing new one.

Catch Your Breath by Jessica Auerbach