Mad Enchantment

I’ll admit: I approached *Mad Enchantment* skeptical. Another book about Monet? But Ross King doesn’t just *tell* you about the *Nymphéas*—he makes you *feel* the weight of a 70-year-old man hauling canvases twice his size through a flooded studio, or the panic of painting while German shells shake the walls. The book’s strength lies in its unflinching focus on the *labor* of art. King lingers on Monet’s physical struggles—his hands trembling from nerve damage, his eyes betraying him—so vividly that when Richards, as narrator, slows his cadence during these passages, it’s like watching a painter step back from the easel, exhausted. That said, the audiobook isn’t without flaws. Richards’ delivery, while generally excellent, occasionally flattens during the denser art-critical sections (a 10-minute dive into the symbolism of willow trees tested my focus). And King’s tangential detours—like a lengthy digression on French garden design—sometimes disrupt the momentum. Yet these are quibbles. The real triumph is how the audiobook *sounds* like Monet’s late work: layered, occasionally chaotic, but ultimately transcendent. When King describes the orchid-like purples Monet squeezed onto his palette in his final years, Richards’ voice softens, and for a moment, you *see* it. That’s the kind of alchemy that makes this more than a biography—it’s a séance with a ghost who refused to stop painting, even as the world burned around him.