The first novel in nearly a decade from Myla Goldberg, the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Bee Season—a compelling and wholly original story about a female photographer grappling with ambition and motherhood, a balancing act familiar to women of every generation.
Feast Your Eyes, framed as the catalogue notes from a photography show at the Museum of Modern Art, tells the life story of Lillian Preston: “America’s Worst Mother, America’s Bravest Mother, America’s Worst Photographer, or America’s Greatest Photographer, depending on who was talking.” After discovering photography as a teenager through her high school’s photo club, Lillian rejects her parents’ expectations of college and marriage and moves to New York City in 1955. When a small gallery exhibits partially nude photographs of Lillian and her daughter Samantha, Lillian is arrested, thrust into the national spotlight, and targeted with an obscenity charge. Mother and daughter’s sudden notoriety changes the course of both of their lives and especially Lillian’s career as she continues a life-long quest for artistic legitimacy and recognition.
Narrated by Samantha, Feast Your Eyes reads as a collection of Samantha’s memories, interviews with Lillian’s friends and lovers, and excerpts from Lillian’s journals and letters—a collage of stories and impressions, together amounting to an astounding portrait of a mother and an artist dedicated, above all, to a vision of beauty, truth, and authenticity.
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“Using a natural and direct delivery, and with the help of a few veteran narrators, author Myla Goldberg deftly takes up much of narration herself, telling the story through the artist’s daughter’s recollections, letters, friends’ accounts, and the descriptions of 118 photographs in a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. The descriptions offer a wonderful testament to the power of the spoken word—the listener can imagine every detail in every photograph. A well-written, adventuresome production. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
“A daringly inventive parable of female creativity and motherhood.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine“Goldberg offers a searching consideration of the way that the identities and perceptions of a female artist shift over time.”
— New Yorker“Wrenchingly intimate…Goldberg’s passionate depiction of Lillian rings heartbreakingly true.”
— New York Times“Lively and vivid.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune“A riveting portrait of an artist who happens to be a woman.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Myla Goldberg is the bestselling author of several books, including Feast Your Eyes, The False Friend, Wickett’s Remedy, and Bee Season, which was a New York Times Notable Book, a winner of the Borders New Voices Prize, and a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award, as well as being adapted to film and widely translated.
Lisa Flanagan is a classically trained soprano, comedian, voice-over artist, and Earphones Award–winning narrator.
Joy Osmanski, theater, television, and film actress, is an award-winning audiobook narrator who has won three AudioFile Earphones Awards. She graduated from Principia College with a degree in creative writing and received her MFA from UC San Diego.
Jacques Roy is a audio narrator and actor, known for The Lower Angels and Room and Board.
Candace Thaxton is an actress and audiobook narrator. She has starred in several films and television shows, including Ghost Town and Law & Order.