The Museum of Modern Love

Rose’s clever, genre-bending hybrid of fact and fiction is an exploration of love and convergence set against the backdrop of a work of art performed by Marina Abramovic´ at MoMA in New York City in 2010. Troubled composer Arky Levin, whose absent wife is gravely ill, joins several other needy characters as they witness the Serbian artist sitting at a table in the museum, gazing into the eyes of anyone wishing to join her (as the artist really did in 2010, for over 700 hours over the course of a few months). He becomes friendly with Jane Miller, who has come from Georgia burdened with the death of her husband, but many others watch as well, and each is healed or transformed by the experience. Assisting the characters in unspooling their stories is a spirit or angel, guardian of the creatives Arky and Marina, the ghost of Marina’s mother Danica, and, most strangely, the artist herself. Rose dives into the head of Abramovic´ to muse upon the meaning of it all, which might appear controversial had Abramovic´ not given the author complete freedom to appropriate. Taken together, these points of view succeed in creating a portrait of human desire and human failing, but perhaps most profoundly, human striving for something greater than self. Rose’s melancholy book resonates with emotion, touching on life’s great dilemmas—death, vocation, love, art. (Nov.)