The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone by Adele Griffin (review)

The art world periodically eats its own young, and it looks like that’s what happened to Addison Stone, the prodigious young talent who died falling—jumping?—from a bridge she was putting an installation on. Griffin’s novel emulates long-form nonfiction journalism, consisting of interviews with those who knew Addison along with Addison’s own emails and notes, while photographs of Addison and her art provide additional illumination. The result is a fascinating peel-back of a character and post-mortem conventions of storytelling: initial reports about gifted and willful Addison are absolutely fawning, but gradually a more nuanced picture appears as Addison’s immense talent takes her to New York after junior year. There she becomes a hot property, rubbing shoulders with the moneyed and famous and falling first for a well-heeled young Eurobrat and then for an intense fellow artist; at the same time, though, she pushes away the medication she takes for her schizophrenic symptoms and lies to her therapist as her always precarious stability begins to slide away. The result is a compelling look at the dark underbelly of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl fantasy, an exploration of the way a magnetic personality can imbalance relationships, a portrait of an artist whose talent comes from the part of her that endangers her, and a whiff of supernatural possibility (the voice Addison hears may be that of a real, long-dead young woman). Griffin’s “interviews” often define the speakers in swift and telling strokes but also allow complexities to emerge as interviewees expand their statements and perspectives shift. There’s no shortage of romance in the portrayal of Addison, the brilliant beauty who captured all eyes and whose ghost still powers imaginations, but perceptive readers will see beyond the glamor to the simmering dysfunction and may be inspired to investigate the tragic real-life artists mentioned alongside her.