A Review of Black and White by Dani Shapiro

What if the one person who is supposed to protect you against the world is the one who exploits you? That is the topic in Black and White, a novel about Clara Dunne, whose mother is Ruth Dunne, a world-famous photographer. Clara was Ruth's muse, her favorite subject for photography, and Ruth always photographed her in the nude. The story is told from Clara's point of view, now an adult with a daughter of her own. She ran away from her home in New York City at age 18, and never looked back. Living in Maine with her artist husband, Clara is contacted by her older sister, Robin, when Ruth's failing health reaches the point of no return. Clara is forced to face her past, face having been exploited by her mother, face Robin, perpetually angry at having been ignored by their mother, and face the fact that her mother's fame outshines any notion of how the "Clara Series" affected it's subject.
Ruth is seen as the ultimate artiste, beautiful, talented, brilliant even, in her depictions of Clara. From the age of three, Clara is photographed naked in all sorts of ways- Clara With The Lizard was the beginning, a photograph of Clara in the bathtub with a plastic lizard in her mouth, one leg up on the side of the tub, "splayed open" for all to see. It ended with "Clara at Age 14", at which point Clara makes sure her mother will no longer photograph her.
This story is a raw, emotional one. Clara as an adult is not in touch with any emotions of her past. She focuses solely on the present; her marriage, daughter and life on a remote island off the coast of Maine. When she does finally see Ruth again, Ruth is still the elitist, the snobby artist surrounded by sycophants who only value her for her work.
I did enjoy this story very much. It unravels perfectly, bits of information about the past doled out piece by piece. It subtly hits the same question over and over: Does Ruth deserve forgiveness? It isn't only Clara who needs to forgive; Robin has also been damaged as her mother ignored her completely in favor of her work, which just happened to be Clara. The one thing that bothered me about the story was Ruth herself. While she is not one-dimensional as a character, she comes off as very self-involved as well as unapologetic, and since she is dying, does not really evolve much as a character. So-called 'villians' should not be truly one-dimensional; they rarely are in real life.
In all, this was an emotionally moving, well told story. I felt for the characters, as flawed as they all were. I would be interested in reading more by this author.