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.

With mesmerizing grace and earnest beauty, Sirens & Muses wrestles with questions of selfhood and ambition, art and protest, and new love.Book Synopsis 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 the process, they must find either their most authentic terms of life-of success, failure, and joy-or risk losing themselves altogether. Now, all must struggle to find new identities in art, in society, and amongst each other. When Preston concocts an explosive hoax, the fates of all four artists are upended as each is unexpectedly thrust into the cutthroat New York art world. But Karina also can't shake her fascination with Preston Utley, a senior and anti-capitalist Internet provocateur publicly feuding with visiting professor and political painter Robert Belfer-a once-controversial figurehead seeking to regain cultural relevance, and perhaps a spotlight. Gradually, Louisa and Karina are drawn into an intense sensual and artistic relationship, one that forces them to confront their deepest desires and fears.

But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarified bubble, dreaming only of disproving the notion that in art, everything has already been done. It's 2011: America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. “'The lives of four artists are forever altered by the desires, protests, and ambitions that lure and unsettle them in this magnetic novel.

Sirens and muses by antonia angress