A Vincent Van Gogh Novel

Leaving Van Gogh by Carol Wallace

Carol Wallace's historical novel covers the last year of Vincent Van Gogh's life.  It opens with Theo, Vincent's brother, discussing Vincent's mental health issues and inquiring about whether Dr. Gachet could help Vincent, if he moved to the French town of Auvers-sur-Oise, located just outside Paris.  Theo wants Gachet to supervise his brother. Gachet, a known patron of the arts and an amateur artist himself, agrees and is immediately drawn to van Gogh's luminous work.

Wallace tells the story of Vincent's last several months from the perspective of  Paul Gachet, a doctor specializing in mental illness.  Gachet befriends Vincent and invites him to his home while trying to determine the nature of Vincent's mental problems.  Gachet finds Van Gogh to be an irresistible puzzle, a man whose mind, plagued by demons, poses the most potentially rewarding challenge of Gachet’s career.  Wallace poses the moral dilemma of whether to facilitate the death of a loved one who is suffering. Gachet, still guilty that he refused his consumptive wife's plea to help her die years earlier, decides to help Vincent by leaving his loaded gun where Vincent will find it.  

Wallace accepts the scenario that Vincent Van Gogh shot himself in the chest.  Chances are she was writing her novel at the time that biographers, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, were publishing their work,  Van Gogh: The Life.  In their biography of Van Gogh, they conducted a careful analysis of the facts and documents available on how Vincent died, and present a very credible case refuting the popular notion that Vincent Van Gogh committed suicide.  Without using the traditional story line of how Van Gogh died, Wallace would not have had a basis for telling her story from the perspective of Dr. Gachet providing Vincent with the means to end his tortured life.

I do agree with Library Journal's concluding statement the novel does a fine job of offering insight into the "damning, draining combination of genius and madness" while telling the story of the final few months of van Gogh's tortured existence.  I also agree you should read this haunting novel with a volume of van Gogh reprints at your side for reference.  Wallace does a great job through the novel in describing and explaining Vincent's unique painting style, which has captivated audiences of his work ever since.