Contrapposto is an entertaining and thoughtful exploration of art and creativity that unfolds into a gorgeous, lifelong love story.

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Dave Eggers’ new book Contrapposto takes us into the art world through the eyes of Cricket Dib, a ten-year-old boy living an ordinary life in Indiana. He loses himself in drawing and the steady, loving presence of his grandfather, until two formative events begin to shape the course of his life. In his first drawing classes, Cricket discovers the thrill of form taking shape beneath his brush and realizes that he can truly draw. Around the same time, he meets Olympia, a golden-eyed girl one year older than him who will become both the great love of his life and the fiercest champion of his art.

Olympia is fearless, electric, and full of ideas, with an endless depth of knowledge about art. She wants to start an art movement with Cricket, and he gets swept up in her fierce energy, never managing to escape her orbit as she comes in and out of his life over the next six decades. Despite time and distance, what never changes is their friendship and love.

From Indiana to Cambodia to New York to Paris, the book interrogates the meaning of art, while gently satirizing it, through the various forms that Cricket’s career takes. He studies art at a local university and sits in on pretentious critiques, hand-paints signs for local businesses, joins the production team of a former classmate who becomes a millionaire by having others paint what he can’t, sells that classmate an original idea, paints convincing copies of iconic paintings, and eventually finds himself running an atelier. 

Cricket resists forcing commercialization into his art, choosing instead to make just enough to live. He keeps his best work hidden away in a shipping container atop a bluff in Cambodia. Olympia, by contrast, urges him to produce more, to build a body of work, to sell. 

Eggers’ own experience in art school helps to inform the book, which is filled with his own drawings. Through Cricket, he invites us to question what art really is. Is it the idea, or the execution? Does the idea have to be original? Must the artist be the one who makes it? Does difficulty matter? And if the artist can’t explain it, is it still art?

For Cricket, the answer is simple: art is the satisfaction of creation. He wants just two things out of life: to make art, and to be with Olympia. While Contrapposto is a book about art, it’s ultimately a love story drawn over time – and a gorgeous one at that. The ending filled my soul.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC. All opinions are my own.