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Editorial Review Product Description
A sweeping story of love, art, and boxing, this novel centers around the mysterious Arthur Cravan -- semiprofessional boxer, art critic, con man, nephew of Oscar Wilde. Cravan befriended Jack Johnson, the exiled black American boxer, in Paris; in 1916 they staged a fight to pay for Cravan's passage out of war-torn Europe. In New York, Cravan fell in love with the poet Mina Loy; they fled to Mexico and were married. Soon after, Cravan was lost at sea in a hurricane and presumed dead. In letters between Jack and Mina thirty years after Cravan's disappearance, Shadow-Box sketches this expansive tale in the era of tremendous social, artistic, and political upheaval before and during World War I. Amazon.com Review
Antonia Logue's Shadow-Box blends historical fact with imaginativefiction in a sometimes awkward but ultimately compelling mix. Working inher favor is a cast of characters unlike any other. Mina Loy, the painterand Dadaist poet notorious for her beauty, her love affairs, and herflamboyant home-made hats; her husband, Arthur Cravan, a semi-professionalboxer, art critic, and loup garou of polite society; and Cravan'sfriend Jack Johnson, Heavyweight Champion of the World on the eve of WorldWar I, when being a black boxer meant facing death threats and abuse.Theirs is an extraordinary story, featuring cameos from art-worldluminaries like Marinetti and Duchamp, and chronicling a passion as grandon the page as it was in real life. The novel begins in 1946, 30 years after Cravan disappeared off the coastof Guatemala, as Mina and Jack begin a late-life correspondence. Reflectiveand far-ranging, their letters both recount their life stories and attemptto come to terms with the enigmatic figure of Cravan. Jack and Mina'svoices too often sound alike, and the epistolary premise occasionally wearsthin ("I was worried you might not write back--I'm glad you wrote back sofast. You're right in what you said. All the stuff we know about each otherand we don't really know a damned thing..."). But there are other passagesthat ring both poetic and true to the historical characters they portray,as when Marinetti declares himself to Mina: 'Mrs Haweis, alone with stokers feeding the hellish fires of great ships,alone with black spectres who grope in the red-hot bellies of locomotiveslaunched on their crazy courses, alone with drunkards reeling like woundedbirds along the city walls, alone, it is you that I have come for MrsHaweis, you alone.' A few pages into each chapter, the narrative's sheer momentum takes over,and the reader is immersed in a world of boxing rings and surrealistsalons, bullfights, and high modernist art. Believable, beautifullyresearched, this is a first novel of astonishing confidence and range. Lookfor great things in Logue's future. --Mary Park ... Read more Customer Reviews (8) 
A beautiful and heartrending tale.
A beautiful and heartrending tale of love, friendship and tragedy. I was at first disappointed at Arthur Cravan, the shadowy subject of the novel, notappearing more frequently; by comparison Jack Johnson`s boxing career occupies a more important place. However the second part of the work, leading to its tragic finale, more than makes up for this initial disappointment. The pain of loss, especially the loss of a soul-mate as important to Mina Loy as Cravan was, is so realistically portrayed as to make this book unforgettable to the reader of any sensitivity whatsoever. Antonia Logue`s fictional conclusion, in which she has Cravan still alive in 1946, his existence unknown to Mina his wife due to the death of Johnson in a car accident (the boxer was hastening to inform Mina of her husband`s existence after his disappearance at sea in 1918), is arguably even more tragic than the doubtless reality of his having drowned in 1918; Mina remaining forever in ignorance of the truth. For someone who has come to love Cravan also for all he represents, this book is a godsend. I recommend it to all who wish to discover more about this remarkable man, the nephew of Oscar Wilde. May readers of "Shadow-Box" resolve to rectify the ignorance of Cravan, still today, in the English-speaking world, when he remains such a well-known and time-honoured name in the annals of French literature!
Shadow Box: Recreating a Certain Past
"Shadow Box" has received quite mixed reviews: some positive;others critical of its reliance on a biography of Mina Loy by CarolynBurke. It overall "suffers" (if such be the word)from a failingcritics find in modern, especially UK (by extension Ireland)literature: areliance on already-established characters and history. Apart from thosepossible faults, I found the book interesting and well-written. Beingunaware of Loy, and only vaguely having heard of Arthur Cravan, I foundtheir characters believable;their epoch and milieu in which they livedcolourfully-drawn. I do know something of Jack Johnson. The boxing scenes,the hostility Johnson received when entering the ring, were strong. Theauthor has, apparently, never been an actual boxing fan. Her descriptionsofthe sport's technical aspects were thus impressive. Boxers foughtdifferently then.
Logue lets you read aloud someone's mail
I never liked epistolary romances but I found myself fully immerse into this one.I know Carolyn Burke's biography is a lot deeper than Logue's but here, and only here you find yourself completely involved in thisintimate exchange.I cought myself reading in a different internal voiceMina and Jack's letters, a rare feeling of guilt and curiosity as if I hadfound someone else's mail, I could not stop reading it.
A good read, but...
Mina Loy lead a fascinating, adventurous life.That this novel captures much of it in such rich, well-researched detail is due, however, not to the meticulous research of Logue, but to the scholar who wrote the biographyupon which the novel is based.Shadow-Box is good because it is anovelization (unauthorized) of Carolyn Burke's Becoming Modern.Why notread the original?
a shadow of becoming modern
I second the sentiments of the New York Times reviewer ' the anecdotes here, many of which seem merely to have been cribbed from Carolyn Burke's recent biography of Loy, read more like a book report than a reinvention ofthe events and people portrayed"
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