Duren’s writing is so lush you will want to stop and read sentences over again… Is this a book about the power of Art? The anguish of war? The hypocrisy of “good” men who make money off death? Love? Atonement? All of the above.

Brian Duren is a writer of enviable talent, and Ivory Black is a novel of profound elegance. At once a love story, a novel of political intrigue, and a reflection on the way art and memory often collide, it’s a book with something for everyone. What’s more, the moral weight of this novel will leave you pondering its characters for months after reading. This is just the beginning from Duren, who seems able to write about anything and everything. Lord knows, I’ll be first in line for whatever’s next.

In Ivory Black, Brian Duren takes us back to the last century—from hippie days to the Iraq war—and does it so powerfully and energetically that we can see it all in vivid color. This is a novel of enduring beauty and sorrow told by a master of the trade.

Rarely do I read a novel so compelling its multiple storylines are difficult to put down. We witness the main character making one mistake after another, but always leading with his heart. Ivory Black is a love story (in all its myriad forms), a war novel, a meditation on art, and the saga of a man who finally learns what is most important in life. It is a beautiful, hard, wonderful lesson to read. 

In Big Bluff, Colorado in the ‘60s, young Richard sits in his father’s art studio. He watches as a painting emerges from his father’s concentration and strokes of paint: a mysterious, melancholy and magical process. From his father he learns to draw, knowledge he uses to make revealing caricatures, a skill that accompanies him through student years and adventures in France. Life follows its course until Richard becomes a high-up consultant behind the scenes of the Iraqi War. A coming-of-age story becomes Greek tragedy. Only the power of painting offers possible redemption. Brian Duren astutely explores what it can mean to be an artist working in the world. As Richard’s father says, “You paint with your eyes closed so you can see the reality you have to paint.”

Brian Duren breathes life into the classic artistic model of the solitary genius, showing two different ways a painter can be in the world. A father and his son follow separate trajectories and end up in the same place…but with a twist. The novel’s energetic plotline is accompanied by delicious descriptions of sights, smells and sounds which are a joy to the senses. Ivory Black celebrates the high romance of a certain kind of art life by putting an imaginary paintbrush into the hands of the reader and leading the way through an experience so real, it seems like more than a dream.