I don’t know a lot of art history so this was a great introduction for me to Picasso and his story. That said, it was a slog and I’m not sure whether the book was entirely too shallow or entirely too deep. The author rests her case about Picasso’s “otherness” in Paris as a condition we need to understand in order to access his work, but it was patchily addressed amid her general overview of the artists who created modern art and Picasso’s preeminent place in that movement. I have a new understanding of the tension between modern art and its predecessors, and of the political/social milieu of early 20th century Paris, and am glad for that at least. 3/5