Book of the Month -- February 2006

It’s time again for the Book of the Month Award. And February’s award goes to . . .

THE LOST PAINTING: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece (2005), by Jonathan Harr. This is nonfiction, but it has the plot, characterization, suspense, and happy ending of a really good novel. It’s the story of an Italian art history graduate student’s hunch that a painting purportedly by a second-rate Flemish artist is really a lost Caravaggio.

I described the book in my post of 12 February. It's by the author of A CIVIL ACTION (1995), another fine book, which was made into an excellent movie for which Robert Duvall was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor. (He won the Screen Actors Guild Award for the role.)

They must make Harr’s exciting new book into a movie; there are half a dozen supporting roles that just might win Duvall the Oscar this time.