But Karina also can't shake her fascination with Preston Utley, a senior and anti-capitalist Internet provocateur, who is publicly feuding with visiting professor and political painter Robert Berger-a once-controversial figurehead seeking to regain relevance. Gradually, Louisa and Karina are drawn into an intense sensual and artistic relationship, one that forces them to confront their deepest desires and fears. Complicating matters is Louisa's unexpected attraction to her charismatic roommate, Karina Piontek, the preternaturally gifted but mercurial daughter of wealthy art collectors. Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarefied bubble. a deeply relatable and profoundly enjoyable read, one drenched in prismatic color and light.'-Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of With Teeth FINALIST FOR THE MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD * ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Glamour, PopSugar, Debutiful It's 2011: America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.Four artists are drawn into a web of rivalry and desire at an elite art school and on the streets of New York in this 'gripping, provocative, and supremely entertaining' ( BuzzFeed ) debut 'Captures the ache-inducing quality of art and desire.

In part two, set over the following year, the characters have left Wrynn’s bubble for New York City, where Preston and Karina prepare for a joint debut show at Robert’s former gallery, and Angress sweeps everything toward a wonderfully complex conclusion. Preston and Karina begin a romantic relationship on unequal footing, while Preston, a member of the school’s Occupy group, antagonizes an increasingly desperate Robert by excoriating his work in Artforum, and the novel’s first part ends with a major rupture. When Louisa asks Karina to pose for a painting, the initial reticence between the two fades, and something more volatile emerges. Angress nimbly embodies each of her characters, allowing her exceptional storytelling abilities to shine.

The yin to Utley’s yang is Robert Berger, a teacher whose own art career, once white-hot, has atrophied.

Preston Utley, a senior, questions the school’s relevance in the modern age. Her roommate, the icy and beautiful Karina Piontek, is everything Louisa is not: worldly, wealthy, and confident. Nineteen-year-old Louisa Arceneaux is a new transfer student at the fictional Wrynn College in New England, arriving from her native Louisiana.

A quartet of artists negotiate love, ambition, and politics during the 2011 Occupy movement in Angress’s winning debut.

Sirens and muses by antonia angress