The Art Student's War by Brad Leithauser

The year is 1943. Bianca Paradiso is a pretty and ambitious eighteen-year-old studying to be an artist while her bustling, thriving hometown turns from mass-producing automobiles to rolling out fighter planes and tanks. For Bianca, national and personal conflicts begin to merge when she is asked to draw portraits of the wounded young soldiers who are filling local hospitals. Suddenly she must confront lives maimed at their outset as well as her own romantic yearnings, and she must do so at a time when another war—a war within her own family—is erupting.

After reading this book, I can honestly say, I have no idea what it's about. It made no impression on me whatsoever.

There is a girl named Bea and she is an art student. Her family is melodramatic and they live in Detroit during World War Two. Bea paints portraits of wounded soldiers.

That's it. That is all I got from it. Other things happened but I just stopped caring at that point.

 The main character is uninteresting, unrelatable, narcissistic and shallow. The story is more about the trivial things her family goes through then about the war or the fact that she paints the soldiers. Leithauser's writing is trite. I found myself thinking, "I've read this before," several times throughout the story. If he would have cut out the parts that were repeated the book would have been at least 100 pages shorter.

I am actually mad I wasted my time on this book. I could have been reading something much more interesting.

Don't waste your time.

1 out of 5 stars