An interesting and somewhat circular story featuring an amateur detective. Buenos Aires. A former auction house employee (who was forced out due to questionable but not unusual ethics in the 1960s/70s) and recently let go art critic has decided to search down the supposed master forger whose works passed through her hands. She meets people and visits places she frequented all those years ago--but was her name really Renée? Is there any chance she is still alive? Can she find her, or any hidden stash or proof that it was she who forged so many portraits by Mariette Lydis?

This book is certainly interesting, but I think, for me, it would have worked better on paper. The narration is fine, I just think the writing style and organization lend themselves better to paper (for me). ( )

A fascinating look inside the world of art forgery that complements a contemplative mystery about a woman's identity. (Well - mystery may be an overstatement - there is no clean answer to the who-is-she question.) We follow the narrator as she treks through Argentina to uncover the real identities, and importantly the motivations, of two women who have simultaneous reputations in the "legit" art world and the underground of art forgery. This is a new author to me and there are a handful of turns of phrase that stopped me in my tracks. Highly recommended. ( )

I've been left feeling a bit lukewarm as regards María Gainza's Portrait of an Unknown Lady. It's one of those cases where the problem is a mix of my perhaps having misjudged what the book would be like and the promotional material for the book promising something other than what the book actually is.

The GoodReads promo opens by describing Portrait of an Unknown Lady as "the captivating story of an auction house employee on the trail of an enigmatic master forger" and goes on to say "In the Buenos Aires art world, a master forger has achieved legendary status. Rumored to be a woman, she seems especially gifted at forging canvases by the painter Mariette Lydis, a portraitist of Argentine high society. But who is this absurdly gifted creator of counterfeits? What motivates her? And what is her link to the community of artists who congregate, night after night, in a strange establishment called the Hotel Melancólico?" So, I was expecting a mystery novel more or less.

Portrait of an Unknown Lady, however, is not a mystery novel in the traditional narrative sense. Instead, it's more an impressionistic novel that gives readers a chance to piece together the unfleshed bones of a story through careful reading. Our unnamed female narrator finds work as the assistant to a woman charged with authenticating paintings for one of Argentina's major banks (she never does work as an auction house employee as far as I can tell). From there we go to the topic of forgeries and a brief-ish description of a group of art students who sometimes make a living by producing forgeries. Throw in the text of an auction catalogue for an artist's memorabilia and minor works that may or may not be forged. Then round things out with vague interviews attempting to pin down the life story of one of those sometimes-forging students years later when it's no longer clear whether she's even alive.

Portrait of an Unknown Lady reminds me a bit of Umberto Eco's Numero Zero—there's a story in there, but it comes in slices without the connecting threads that could weave it into something more substantial. If you're interested in recent Argentine literature, this novel is worth checking out and will give you some interesting moments to turn over once you've finished reading. If your real joy is the mystery genre, this title is likely to disappoint.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss+; the opinions are my own. ( )