The Impasto Effect
THE IMPASTO EFFECT
OVERVIEW
A complex and well-crafted fictional exploration of the burden of unresolved identity and the complications of long-held secrets. Kirkus Reviews
In Hollman’s novel, a young woman, Cecelia, struggles to reconcile her emerging artistic identity with a conflicted past.
Cecilia is buckling under the weight of expectations that go beyond the normal pressures she experienced growing up in East Hampton, New York. Much of her discontent focuses on the modeling career that’s defined her since early childhood. Her overweening mother’s relentless competitiveness doesn’t lend itself to enduring relationships, as Cecilia laments: “No friends. Cold shoulders when I get covers. Mortification.” Neither does the young woman’s genius-level intelligence, which sets her apart from others in her circle, or her lifelong nut allergy that nearly killed her when she was younger. “I don’t want to be one in a million,” she thinks to herself. “I want to be part of the million.” A growing interest in painting guides her college choice (“I didn't show my mother the letter”), and to widen her circle of friends, she takes up running. Cecilia gains the confidence to leave modeling behind and accept a visiting professor’s invitation into an advanced art program. With her newfound assertiveness comes a new identity as “Ceci,” which she plans on using for her art career. Before long, however, her world is complicated when she falls for Drew, an aspiring doctor whose commandeering ways (“He hasn’t asked if I would dine, just presumed, already reserving a table”) clash with her newly won independence. He has his own emotional baggage, due to a missed opportunity for early admission to Harvard University when he was 14, and a series of mysterious phone calls that leave him upset for reasons that Cecilia doesn’t understand. All the same, life goes on for the young couple, who later settle, at Drew’s behest, in Palo Alto, California—until the mystery caller returns, bent on violence.
-Kirkus Review Description
LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE, LOVE & FRIENDSHIP
ENDORSEMENTS
“Over the course of this novel, Hollman has crafted a complex exploration of the meaning of identity, and how the natural, human desire to please others can play out in unsatisfying ways. It rings out loud and clear in Cecilia’s bitter dialogues with her mother (“It’s not as simple as water and diet”), as well as in the shifts between her first-person perspective and Drew’s, which increase in frequency near the end of the novel. The antisemitism that Cecilia encounters on the runway and in her classes also serves as a stark reminder of how bigotry can contribute to a person’s desire to adopt a new persona. This theme of personal transformation is reflected in the novel’s title—an allusion to a painting effect intended to create an illusion. However, Cecilia’s hunger for change, when it goes unsatisfied, leaves her yearning for something much greater—something that more accurately reflects her true self. However, it is also the kind of struggle that she can’t win, Hollman forcefully suggests, without confronting old ghosts. Readers who are wrestling with similar burdens will relate to the character’s plight. A complex and well-crafted fictional exploration of the burden of unresolved identity and the complications of long-held secrets.”
--Kirkus Reviews
In her layered novel The Impasto Effect, Laurie Hollman portrays characters with exceptional abilities who struggle to belong. The central character is named Cecilia, but she prefers to be called Ceci. She is an accomplished model, a gifted artist, and a sharp intellect, yet she is filled with self-doubt and guilt. The emotions that weigh on her have many sources, from historical and present-day antisemitism—experienced in childhood, college, and adulthood—to a controlling mother who seems to prioritize her modeling career over her artistic and intellectual abilities. It is not until she meets a young doctor named Drew David, who is just as exceptional and insecure as she is, that she is able to identify a path toward genuine love and belonging. But her connection with Drew comes at a cost. When a dark force from Drew’s past breaks into the present, the novel takes a violent turn. Ceci must channel her inner strength, overcome powerful insecurities, and inspire the same in Drew for them to find their way forward. Calling attention to modeling and art, Hollman effectively draws the reader’s attention to the external elements that can mask personal deprivation, elicit discrimination, and prevent people from recognizing the substance and depth that often exist beneath the surface.
—Aaron Tillman, author, Lucy Miles’ Photogenic Mind, Consolation Miracles, & The Magical American Jew
“Ceci’s formative years provide the backdrop for this debut novel, unfolding during a cultural and historical period marked by the release of Schindler’s List and the opening of the Holocaust Museum, Washington, D.C. Each chapter flows, offering relatable moments as Ceci struggles with her reputation for unusual intelligence and grapples with her Jewish identity exemplified early on at her bat mitzvah with internalized feelings of fear and shame, rather than joy. Growing anxieties are vividly reflected in Ceci’s artwork during college, as a risky romance unfolds with uncertainty keeping the reader on edge.
The “Impasto Effect” invites rereading. When revisiting the opening poem, “The Ashkenazi Beauty,” its meaning becomes even deeper. The reader grows with the story, offering new layers of significance with each encounter.”
--Sharon Birnknaut, MSEd, School Principal K-8, featured in Education Week, 2008, and recipient of the Paul Harris Award, Rotary International, 2010.
“Laurie’s writing style invites the reader to be a part of each scene; to live in it. Her colorful portrayals of child prodigies, Ceci and Drew, make the reader feel as if she knows them well by the time they meet as young adults, or wishes she really did. At the end of each chapter, the reader pauses with the strikingly curious last sentences, but can’t resist turning the page, wanting to binge on the story. Although conflicted, Ceci is always sweet and caring, pleasing her mother until the reader feels right along with Ceci that it’s about time for her to reach into psychic places she hasn’t experienced before. By the marathon, the author helps the reader experience Ceci’s determination to forget her beauty and prove her body-self could become who she really can be. The reader lives with Ceci’s young social alienation and new capacity to make real female friendships. When the author depicts Drew’s difficulty getting out of his own way, brilliant, yet socially unable to pick up on social cues, the reader is present when his infatuation with Ceci turns a corner, discovering she is far more than a beautiful face, but caring, safe, and brilliant in her own right. This capacity to engage the reader in such direct experience is remarkable: feeling threatened in a violent scene with Drew’s disturbed ex, feeling compassion for Drew’s gentle lovemaking, and so stirred by mother-daughter arguments that the reader wishes to intervene. The characters are not stage actors, but alive, present people. The reader becomes an insider living in the movie, not watching it from the outside.
I can hardly say this should be called reading.”
--Paula Pacini, Senior Energy Consultant & Fitness Professional specializing in managing physical and cognitive growth in older adults.
“A coming-of-age novel steeped in the quiet echoes of inherited history, this story follows Ceci as she moves through identity, belonging, and the ways the past continues to live inside the present. Intergenerational trauma is not a backdrop but a presence, shaping her world, surfacing in relationships, in conflict, and in what is carried forward unspoken.
Written in luminous, attentive prose, the novel explores the inner life of its characters with precision and depth. It is a study in perception, in how love and fear shift and reshape the self through recognition and experience. Beneath it all runs a quiet insistence that strength is not hardness, but openness, self-knowledge, and the courage to be seen.
When Ceci meets Drew, something immediate and unguarded begins. As they move through a world where past experiences and unresolved wounds surface, they begin to navigate them together rather than alone. Their connection deepens, shaped by both circumstance and intimacy. In the space they create together, vulnerability becomes revelation. Each, in being witnessed, begins to release who they thought they were and see themselves with new clarity.
What unfolds is not only a love story, but a slow unfolding of self. A meditation on intimacy, transformation, and the fragile, necessary act of becoming.”
--Sarah Phoenix, MSEd Mental Health Counseling, psychotherapist, filmmaker, artist
“The Impasto Effect explores the emotional cost of extraordinary beauty juxtaposed with the longing to be valued for one’s inner life rather than one’s outward appearance. At the emotional heart of the story is Ceci, a gifted artist trapped by her mother’s expectations and others’ projections; a story that blends romance, psychological tension, and artistic awakening.
What makes the novel compelling is its reflection on the distinction between surface admiration and genuine love. The portrait Ceci paints of Drew, her lover, becomes the novel’s symbolic focus—revealing his vulnerability and complexity beneath his studied and polished exterior. A significant crisis ultimately creates the necessary breakthrough that brings Drew to life in a profound way; his fascination with Ceci is transformed into authentic compassion.
An emotionally engaging story about identity, love, creativity, and recognition.”
--Carol E. Anderson, D.Min., Doctor of Divinity, MFA, Creative Nonfiction, MA Telecommunication Arts
“I have been privileged to be an early reader of The Impasto Effect. Dr. Hollman has created a character that blooms before the reader’s eyes and then lingers in the mind long afterward. This is no film-star fantasy, but a young woman faced by the stark realities of life. Too beautiful and too smart to be accepted by her peers, Ceci struggles to find meaningful relationships as she comes of age. When she finally meets the perfect man, she finds that he is also carrying demons of a less-than-perfect past. As if they did not have enough to deal with, always there, like a penumbra in the background, is the antisemitism that never goes away.”
--Kay Smith. M.A Art History, M.A. Special Education, Shakespeare Scholar
“A luminous exploration of art, ambition, mental health, and the deep human need to be seen. The Impasto Effect is a profoundly emotional novel about genius, longing, love, shame and the fragile line between brilliance and self-destruction.”
--Rachel Thompson, author, The Broken Series, owner, BadRedhead Media, LLC.
“In an absorbing debut novel, Laurie Hollman traces Ceci, a statuesque, high-fashion model growing up in front of cameras as a cover girl, mysteriously pushed forward by her mother, who overlooks Ceci’s brilliance, artistic talents, and dissatisfaction with being the center of attention.
Although her family is not religious, Ceci’s father, a detached Manhattan attorney, teaches about the persecution of Jewish people before and during the Holocaust. Empathy for Ceci is furthered by her admired bat mitzvah speech on social justice and her secret retreat to the attic to paint dark abstracts and sketches of her desperate inner world.
Using perceptive abilities as a psychoanalyst, Hollman portrays Ceci in college struggling with classmates viewing her on magazine covers, spilling out unfriendly, antisemitic insults. Ceci laments to her one best friend, “Supposed beauty, brains, and talent don’t keep you company.”
During the summer, Ceci makes her own decision by joining a long-distance running club training for the NY City Marathon. However, threatening situations soon follow at her LA modeling job, where she is the intended target of a swastika found etched in a bathroom. Then she and her coach are interrupted by a rival model accusing them of an intimate relationship that led to magazine covers. After Coach Z throws her out, he also apologizes for his pressure on Ceci to wear Coco Chanel clothes, historically known as a Nazi collaborator.
At home in an intense moment of self-revelation, Ceci sees a photo of her maternal grandmother, a skilled fashion designer whose career was cut short when she was shot in front of her New York City synagogue. She died this horrific death after having much earlier escaped pogroms in Europe before the Holocaust. Ceci learns she was named Cecelia after her grandmother.
Intergenerational transmission of trauma comes into focus with Hollman’s poignant empathy and psychological insight. On the anniversary of her grandmother’s death, at her grandmother’s grave, Mother tells Ceci, “You want me to loosen my reins on you. To do so, I have to release her reins on me.” Ceci understands that her mother used her young career to grieve her grandmother.
In Part Two, Ceci meets Drew, a self-absorbed, brilliant, handsome 24-year-old medical resident, a standout in adolescent pediatrics whose work leads Ceci and Drew to face emotional challenges living together in California. At this juncture, Hollman’s own experience as an artist transports the reader into Ceci’s mind. Ceci paints a secret portrait of Drew, layering varied textures to create his psychic image, as if the visible is not the only reality.
The reader is unable to stop turning pages as threatening circumstances follow in Ceci’s studio that I will not reveal except to point out that, in time, Drew becomes immersed in Ceci’s portrait of him: “She’s seen through me to my core—the core I don’t yet know.” The impasto effects of the story reach an apotheosis that grabs readers in their guts. A changed man, Ceci’s love breaks through Drew’s enigmatic narcissistic traits, leading the reader to an ending of the novel wanting more.”
--Joe Davis, MFA Cinema, PhD Psychology, PsyD Psychoanalysis
INSPIRATION
This debut novel is written in the first person with the two principal characters as narrators. My intent as an author is to engage the reader in an experience, not only a read, where he or she is closely in touch with the inner worlds of this young woman and young man as they come of age. Through writing, I hope readers will imagine themselves in the characters’ emotive place, sense what they may need, as if living inside their minds.
Apart and together, the two main characters’ journeys come alive as they struggle. I hope readers will feel with the central character, Ceci, absorb her conflicts when others value her beauty and exploit her body. Both her psyche and soma are inherently significant to her emerging sense of self. I hope readers interested in narcissistic men will discover how Drew’s morality and empathy can shift and grow. Has Ceci influenced him? In my experience as a psychoanalyst, I found it is possible for narcissists to gain empathy. That’s why it is real to write about such transformations.
Multiple themes are interwoven that I want to come alive, such as alienation growing up as child prodigies, the traumatic impact of intergenerational experiences with antisemitism, the evolution of identity and a sense of self that is transformative, and how these two young people grapple with themes of conscience, emotional distress, and the meaning of friendship and love.
My inspiration comes from my desire as a psychoanalyst, an author, and an artist to envision, as if I were painting, not writing in words, the evolution of these brilliant, talented, and desperately conflicted young people in their own voices, so that the reader lives in their minds and experiences their actions as if they are right there within growing Ceci and Drew.
For me, each character, major or minor, is their own person. I can hardly wait for each to see herself or himself accurately. They create themselves, and I stand by amazed. Some readers are like paparazzi, stalking the writer to find glimpses of the writer’s autobiography. To me, those readers are missing out, deflecting from their own experiences of how to design truth. It’s incomprehensible to me that life is actually comprehensible or, for that matter, even plausible. Readers and writers aren’t recorders of life; they are creating life, perhaps together.
EXCERPTS
Excerpt 1
Prologue
1967
“Red, the helicopter here on a Saturday morning? What’s going on?”
The roar of the blades over East Hampton beach added to the fierce August heat.
“Eve, grab your pocketbook. I’ll explain on the way.”
“But—”
Red took her hand and rushed into the helicopter. A corporate flight attendant seated them, her smile forced. Red said,
“Sweetheart, I got a call.”
“What?”
“I don’t have all the details but…oh, Eve…your mother…she’s been shot.”
“Shot? How—”
“I don’t know. A bullet in front of a synagogue on the East Side. I don’t know more.”
Excerpt 2
Ceci’s father recounts early history during Shabbat dinner when she is a child. Father begins speaking, followed by Ceci’s narration:
“As your Jewish father, it’s my responsibility to instill history, but it’s your responsibility to question. Question what I say. Don’t hold back.”
He focused on the plight of the Jews leading up to and during the Second World War. His words made the Holocaust alive like in photo images. For some children, I imagined, these dark stories sat in the background. But in my lonely life, they filled my foreground.
He said, “Young refugees’ lives were snuffed out in Czechoslovakia, except for those children sent by trains to foster families in England.”
“Little kids were sent away from their parents?”
“Yes. Parents feared for their children’s lives. The trains were packed. Some scared ones jumped back off the train in panic. Siblings were separated.”
“They went all alone to another country? I hope the English people were already waiting and could find the children they were to take care of as soon as they left the train.”
“The kids wore name cards pinned on their shirts.”
“But what if the name tags fell off, and they didn’t speak English? How terrifying.”
As he repeated this story, I felt like I was trespassing on the lives of these children as I saw them getting on trains as their parents vanished. The way he told it, every child had an individual face in my mind.
And every face was important to him. Hunted Poles in the Warsaw ghetto became people in my personal life. I heard SS officers’ black boots marching too close to starving orphaned children, their skin covered by oily dust and blood.
I thought, You never know what evil men will commit.
Excerpt 3
“Coach, that girl. I know that face. Wait. I’m dizzy.”
“Drink this water. Take your time.”
He hands me a cup.
“OK. I’m coming back to earth . . . You just stood up for me, as a Jewish woman. I had you wrong. I’m ashamed to have cast you—”
“No shame. None. That horrible bitch. You won’t see her ever again. Modeling is not a caste system based on dehumanizing people.”
“That’s a whopper statement coming from you. Caste system? Coach, your hands are shaking. I’ve never, ever seen you like this. Now, you sit. Please, calm down.”
“I’ve been in this business for a long time. I know models feel like dehumanized objects, but they are humans with skills. Like you, working hard. You glide like a ballet dancer. The designers care about you. You’re valued. I’ve thought long and hard about the hierarchy here, but it’s not based on race or religion . . . Yes, physical characteristics are obviously required for some fashions, but merit comes with that. Merit because you learn how to pose in a way that’s artistic. The problem for you, though, is you do not do it for yourself. You do it to please your mother. I’ve always worried about that. Try doing things for yourself. You decided you want to learn at college. You chose a specific college. You’ve a lot to learn, but not about literature and history. That’s easy for you. You’re brilliant. What’s hard for you is to choose—to choose anything.”
The room is spinning.
Excerpt 4
Years later, when Ceci has graduated from college, she meets Drew. This narration by Ceci is their first intimate evening.
He wants to be the best lover and is. Light inhabits the muscles along his neck and shoulders. I know and fear I’ll never see a more beautiful body on a man. Is it just with me that he’s like this? Better be. I hardly know what comes over me, but being intimate is like running with the wind, our arms and legs blending, beyond time and purpose.
How is it that he can make me feel as if everything about me pleases him, as if I fill him with light? I want to be his focal point, completely connected with him so that nothing and nobody else are in his mind. Am I enough for him? Is he enough for me?
He whispers, “You’re soft, yielding gently in a way I’ve never known.” Hidden tenderness surfaces as his hands roam again on my back, his smell everywhere. It’s like emerging from the most gentle dream.
Making love, I meet a part of him I’m sure he doesn’t know is there. How fragile he is despite his manly yet gentle thrusts. I’m convinced he’s felt hurt and unloved somehow. He slips into a vulnerable, unpolished man, with secrets hidden in restlessness. I slowly lift his heavy arm off my bare back to raise my head enough to observe him, the man I want us both to know. I take a chance that he’ll awaken, lean my head slowly over him, and rest my cheek lightly on his chest. His breathing is deep, labored. Feeling the beat of his heart, I don’t want to move away. I’m all sensation. Making love is a way in.
I have this extraordinary feeling, after he excites me like this, that except for Drew, everyone is common. No skin lying between our nakedness, an absence of all barriers, as if we own each other’s bodies. We make love to each other’s insides, fill gaps in acutely sensitive spaces. I know it in every part of me. I swim in it, float in it, roll in the waves as my body rises to meet his like a tiny miracle, every time.
Excerpt 5
In this dialogue, Ceci is narrating. It begins with Drew’s statement:
“Come to California with me.”
My heart beats too rapidly. . . . He’s not asking. He’s telling. His look pierces mine; it almost hurts. . . . He wants me with him. And even though it may be a demand, it’s not said that way. He watches me closely. There’s simplicity in his request,
“Come with me,” he repeats.
I hold back.
Suffused with reddening emotion, he holds very still.
“You’re sure about this?”
“Oh yeah.” Simplicity again.
“But how do you know?”
“Enough questions.”
“You take my breath away. We haven’t known each other very long.”
“Simply tell me.”
“I have this gallery job. I hardly have my feet on the ground. Maybe after you’re settled, I could visit for a weekend, try out—
“Damn, please.”
“You could find out something about me in California and change your mind and—
“Stop.”
He sits up straighter, if that’s possible, and leans forward, our temples nearly touching. His
expression is intent yet enigmatic. His gaze direct.
“What’s holding you back? Choose now—fear or desire.”