A Woman With No Clothes On

A Woman With No Clothes On (2008) is V. R. Main's debut novel. Set in 19th century Paris, it is the story of 18-year-old Victorine Meurent, the painter Edouard Manet and their shared longing for the ultimate painting. The novel won the Trafalgar Squared Prize,[2] and was shortlisted for The People's Book Prize.[3] It was published by Delancey Press.[1]

A Woman With No Clothes On
First edition cover art
AuthorV.R. Main
CountryFrance
LanguageEnglish
GenreHistorical fiction
PublishedLondon: Delancey, 2008[1]
Pages335
ISBN9780953911974
OCLC280369069

Plot summary
Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe, Musée d'Orsay, 1862–1863 by Édouard Manet

The aristocratic Manet and the working-class Victorine Meurent narrate A Woman With No Clothes On. A chance meeting between the two leads to an intense relationship of painting and sexual tension. Manet creates a scandal when he exhibits Le déjeuner sur l'herbe and Olympia in which the naked model is a young Victorine. While critics and the general public dismiss the works, and label Victorine a common prostitute, she is determined to make her mark in the art world as a painter in her own right. Her bitter struggle to succeed is punctuated by the exchanges between Manet and his friend Baudelaire on the matter of modernism.

Critical response

A Woman With No Clothes On was the winner of the Trafalgar Squared Prize for Work in Progress (2008). It was described by the chair of judges, Wendy Robertson as "outstanding. A powerful novel. The writing is original, literary, intense and well-observed".[4]

The author of Manet, Lesley Stevenson praised Main for "rescu[ing] Victorine from her invisibility in the Parisian art world of the nineteenth century".[4]

The novel received press attention in The Guardian[5] and The Times. The Socialist Worker carried an article on the novel's attention to issues of gender and social class,[6] as well as on the feminist blog The F-Word.[7]

Notes
  1. Main, V. R. (2008). A Woman With No Clothes On. Delancey. ISBN 9780953911974. OCLC 280369069.
  2. "A Woman With No Clothes On". Delancey Press. Retrieved 6 April 2014.
  3. "People's Book Prize - Book : A Woman with No Clothes On". peoplesbookprize.com. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  4. V.R. Main (2005-12-15). "A Woman with No Clothes on (Book) by V.R. Main (2008)". Waterstones.com. Archived from the original on 2012-10-12. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  5. Main, V R: The Guardian, G2, pages 16-17. 03/10/2008
  6. Cookson, Matthew: Socialist Worker, page 11. 22/11/2008
  7. Jess McCabe. "Victorine Meurent - Blog". The F-Word. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
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