cover image  Zoia's Gold

Zoia's Gold

Philip Sington, . . Scribner, $26 (389pp) ISBN 978-0-7432-9110-1

In this gorgeously written novel of suspense, which shifts between contemporary Sweden, czarist Russia and 1920s Paris, Sington uses the life of actual Russian-born painter Zoia Korvin-Krukovsky (1903–1999) as a puzzle—and fractured mirror—for the fictional Marcus Elliot, a British art dealer living in Sweden whose career is scuttled by his role in a scam importing undervalued icons. Commissioned to write a catalogue for an exhibition of Zoia's luminous paintings (gold leaf over gesso), Elliot becomes seduced across time by his subject, believing Zoia holds the key to the suicide of his Swedish-born mother. Sington beautifully captures the raw Baltic winter as Elliot delves into Zoia's correspondence, trying to determine whether her "Crimean" paintings are lost, destroyed or his own fevered fantasy. Elliot is unsure whether his work for another art dealer is part of a legitimate retrospective of Zoia's oeuvre or preparation for an illegal auction that will violate the old woman's will. Readers will come away intrigued by Korvin-Krukovsky and the cross-cultural conundrum Sington so elegantly constructs. Under the pseudonym Patrick Lynch, Sington has coauthored six thrillers. (Nov.)