Mona's Eyes

 by homas Schlesser

This is an incredible book.  It is the story of a little girl who has an incident where she loses her sight temporarily.  She is taken to a doctor and receives multiple exams which seem to show she has exceptional vision so they are puzzled as to why this occurred.  Her parents decide to send her to a psychiast and her grandfather agrees to take her.

But instead of taking her to a doctor, once per week, they go to an art gallery to explore one piece of art.  They start at the Louvre, then the D'Orsay and then on to the Modern Art Museum in Paris.  Each time the grandfather gets the girl to study the art and tell her what she sees/feels.  He then gives her some background on the artist and the art.  The selection of art was very interesting, much of it was new to me or pieces by artists I knew but was not familiar with.

The story also includes the tale of how the father has a failing store but eventually gets more money from modifying phones to be cell phones (not sure what that was about) and it turns out the girls loss of sight was due to a memory of her dead grandmother.  The little girl eventually learns her grandmother chose euthanasia.

The art/descriptions in the book were phenomenal.  I don't think I will be able to see art in such a cursory way ever again.

The book also had some lessons about life:

The grandmother tells the girl "Forget the negative my darling, keep the light forever within you".

Christian Boltanski's Archive Yourself "What he wants is for everyonge... to be able to recognize their own life.....We must archive ourselves because whoever we might be, whether a hero or unknow, visible or unvisible, it's through our archive that we can make the memory of the past glimmer".

Pierre Solage's Black is a Color: That there's always moe to look at than you might think.... That you must see beyond what can be seen, because under the panel of wood, we realize that there are other forms... Those forms are hidden but exist elsewhere.  .He teaches us the existence of what escapes our eyes. (another reminder to be mindful).

The book was insightful and inspirational.