"Govier succeeds in bringing back to life a woman who has vanished from the history of art. It is a feminist story of a stroppy, strong-jawed woman who dumps her ineffectual husband, has sexual relationships out of wedlock, but gives her life only to art. Govier has also given us an indelible portrait of Japan at the end of one era and the beginning of another. If The Ghost Brush doesn't make you want to travel to Japan and see multiple views of Mount Fuji and the waves at Kanagawa, you may already be dead, at least in a literary sense." - Edmonton Journal (Canada)
"Exquisite . . . wildly ambitious. . . . Govier has appropriated a seminal, iconic artist from cloistered, isolationist 19th-century Japan, and spun an indelible tale that's as much scholarship as imagination." - Hamilton Spectator (Canada)
"Govier's expansive historical novel turns the spotlight on Oei, the "ghost brush" attributed to some of her father's famous prints, and a character that drives a compulsively readable novel." - Globe and Mail (Toronto)
"A sweeping saga of 19th century Japan, where Oei, the daughter of the great Japanese printmaker Katsushika Hokusai, emerges from her historical sidekick assignment into a bigger, poignant role as a pioneering talent in her own right." - Toronto Star
"Lavishly researched and brilliant. . . . Govier astonishes throughout in her ability to write epic themes intimately, particularly in the lyrical, absorbing, and intense final hundred pages." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"From the hothouse ferment of art studios, bordellos, and Kabuki theater to the tonic countryside, Govier's spectacularly detailed, eventful, and emotionally stormy novel is populated by vivid characters and charged with searing insights into Japanese history and the diabolically difficult lives of women and artists." - Booklist (starred review)
"Katherine Govier reimagines the overlooked artist in this historically rich tale, based on a true story and crafted with vivid imagery." - Marie Claire
"If you read one novel this year by a writer you may be unfamiliar with, read THE PRINTMAKER'S DAUGHTER by Katherine Govier; even if you are familiar with Ms. Govier's novels, this one is unmatched literary fiction." - New York Journal of Books

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Pub date: 2011-11-22

Length: 512 pages