Author Guest Post with Lilianne Milgrom, L’Origine

The riveting odyssey of one of the world’s most scandalous works of art.

Welcome to the February 17th stop on the blog tour for L’Origine by Lilianne Milgrom with iRead Book Tours. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, exclusive content from the author, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

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Author Guest Post

For the love of book clubs

by Lilianne Milgrom

Gustave Courbet’s scandalous 19^th century painting, L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World) is not a painting you can easily ignore, and once you see it you can’t easily forget it! People either love it or hate it, which makes it a great topic of conversation. During my six-week stint as the painting’s first authorized copyist at the Orsay Museum in Paris, I heard just about every diverse opinion you can imagine.

Consequently, I have received numerous interview requests from podcast hosts wanting to chat about L’Origine, my award-winning novel that traces the painting’s extraordinary odyssey across continents and centuries. Although I thoroughly enjoy these stimulating conversations, my speaking engagements at book clubs have been far more rewarding.

Engaging with book club members, I am often thrown off guard by their challenging questions. As a writer one is never quite sure how one’s book will be received nor how it will impact readers. Just as it is common knowledge that two people experiencing the same incident will have two different perspectives and recollections, no two readers will come away with the same impression after reading a given book. 

I have heard from readers who adore the personal prologue of my contemporary adventures with the painting, while others have thanked me for a wild, entertaining ride through history. For some readers, the controversial nature of the painting was quite shocking, while others barely blinked an eye. It makes me realize that once a book leaves an author’s hands, it takes on a life of its own.

Books are such a wonderful way to connect with others. I’ve heard of book clubs that were started forty years ago and are still going strong (although I also know of a book club meeting that became so heated that friendships were irreversibly ruined!).

I used to belong to a book club but it evaporated during the pandemic. I miss the engaging dialogue with other book-lovers, so I began a book club for two with my adult daughter who is living abroad. We share our thoughts, discuss our favorite passages and inevitably spin off into broader subjects touched upon in the book. And then it’s time for the best part–deciding on the next book.

About the Book

L’Origine
The Secret Life of the World’s Most Erotic Masterpiece
by Lilianne Milgrom

Published 28 July 2020
Little French Girl Press

Genre: Historical Fiction
Page Count: 255
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

The riveting odyssey of one of the world’s most scandalous works of art.

In 1866, maverick French artist Gustave Courbet painted one of the most iconic images in the history of art: a sexually explicit portrait of a woman’s exposed genitals. Audaciously titled L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World), the scandalous painting was kept hidden for a century and a half. Today, it hangs in the world-renowned Orsay Museum in Paris, viewed by millions of visitors a year.

​As the first artist authorized by the Orsay Museum to re-create Courbet’s The Origin of the World, author Lilianne Milgrom was thrust into the painting’s intimate orbit, spending six weeks replicating every fold, crevice, and pubic hair. The experience inspired her to share her story and the painting’s titillating, clandestine history. L’Origine is a tale of survival, replete with French revolutionaries, Turkish pashas and nefarious Nazi captains. Hold onto your berets for a riveting ride through history.  

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About the Author

Paris-born Lilianne Milgrom is an internationally acclaimed artist and award-winning author residing in Washington DC. In 2011, she became the first authorized copyist of Gustave Courbet’s controversial painting L’Origine du Monde, which hangs in the Orsay Museum in Paris. Milgrom spent a decade researching and writing L’Origine: The Secret Life of the World’s Most Erotic Masterpiece. Her debut novel has been awarded six literary honors including the Publisher’s Weekly 2021 US Selfies Book Award for Best Adult Fiction.

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Giveaway Alert!

Enter to win L’Origine: The secret life of the world’s most erotic masterpiece signed by the author (one winner/USA only) (ends Feb 28)

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