Nice fiction work about a famous Scottish painting on show at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. I live there so when I happened in a bookstore and looked for novels set in Scotland this caught my eye and I bought it. The painting in question is at the centre of a research effort for its attribution which generates a dive in the past to the age of the Enlightenment, with the accent on the role of some women and their contribution to the turmoil of ideas of the time. The book is written as a mirror story that develops today but also in the 18th century and I appreciated the alternation of chapters set now and then, it gives the whole thing a quick pace.
I found the overall idea nice but somewhat the narrative is a bit contrived, the story takes turns that are too improbable at times - I won't say more because I don't want to create spoilers.
Also, the prose contains too many ordinary details (things like the character takes the mug, slices a cake, cleans this, does that) that disrupt the reading flow without adding much of value.
All in all though it is an interesting piece of work that raises an important point: how much do we really know about the contribution of women to what we are today, as a human society? How much of that was covered, even regarding a supposedly open and progressive time like the Enlightenment? This is something we all need to see more books about, to look back at history with a different eye and get rid of outdated conceptions while at the same time give people the right credit.
I learned a few things, especially in regards to the city I live in.