PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN LADY

Kyla García performs Maria Gainza's brief, richly detailed jewel of a novel with just the right touch of insouciance to capture the essence of the duplicitous unnamed narrator. The story takes place in the clandestine world of art forgery in Buenos Aires and features the lives of its eccentric artists and would-be forgers. García delivers the story as if the narrator, an art critic on the hunt for a mysterious art forger, can be trusted, wryly inflecting the language the way a forger might play with a masterpiece's colors or brushstrokes. Although the story is short, listeners need to pay close attention to the comings and goings of the many characters and be on alert for the occasional red herring. An entertaining and challenging listen. D.G.P. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2022]