Venus, Vanishing: A Novel by Rebecca BirrellPublication Date: October 27, 2026
Pages: 352
Add the Book on:Goodreads
Rating: ★★★½
Source: Edelweiss
Genre: Fiction / Historical / 20th Century / World War II & Holocaust
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. / Macmillan
Synopsis:
Portrait of a Lady on Fire meets The Safekeep in this gripping debut that reckons with art forgery, desire, suspicion, and resistance
In raucous 1928 Berlin, Hannah Sherman has deviated from the traditional narrative arc of a woman’s life. After rejecting an arranged marriage, she leaves home to join the city’s underground art scene, reveling in its clubs and galleries with newfound friends and lovers. Working as a tailor while studying art in every spare moment, Hannah comes to know women and their bodies, first with measuring tape and silk, and later through sensuous layers of paint.Hannah feels like she can finally call herself an artist when a wealthy female art collector commissions her to make an elaborate series of nude portraits. But after Hannah finishes the acclaimed Venus paintings, she discovers that her work is being tampered with and exhibited under a man’s name. When lines between artist and muse are crossed in an intoxicating but perilous affair, Hannah transforms her art into an act of revenge, finding herself caught up in a devastating game of survival.
Laced with queer desire and life-threatening secrets, Venus, Vanishing pulses with hedonism and danger as history comes to Hannah’s door, offering a textured and sweeping counter-narrative of Jewish survival, creativity, and resistance.
REVIEW
Rebecca Birrell, an art historian and curator, brings all of her skills to her captivating debut novel, and it shows on every page. Transpiring over the late 1920s and early 1930s, Venus, Vanishing, tells the story of Hannah Sherman, a budding Jewish artist in Berlin who leaves her family’s home and a proposed life of seamstress work and an arranged marriage for the last hurrah of Weimar-era Berlin nightlife. She moves into a boarding house in 1928, changes her surname to Schmidt, and begins to teach herself to draw while making a living doing tailoring and mending.
Birrell re-creates this lost world beautifully, building up its layers as carefully as a painter: its nightclub dancers and nosy landladies, its bold activists and ambitious politicians. Along the way, Hannah picks up both a boyfriend, Saul, a curator at the gallery she haunts, and a girlfriend, Charlotte, a dancer at a local club. Hannah’s break comes when wealthy female collector Elke, whose husband is an official in the Nazi Party, commissions an elaborate series of nude portraits, the Venus paintings. When Hannah discovers her work has been exhibited under a man’s name, she seeks revenge even as her world begins to change.
This is where the novel shifts from a familiar coming-of-age story to something darker, more deceptive, and absorbing. Laced with queer desire and life-threatening secrets, it pulses with the hedonism and danger of 1930s Berlin as history comes to Hannah’s door. As people begin to vanish into the growing shadows of the city, the novel interrogates what it means to create art when survival is uncertain. Hannah wants to help her family escape, but they cannot contemplate that things will get worse, and when they do decide to leave, they find doors closed.
I loved how much Birrell’s deep understanding of art, art history, and the many real Jewish female artists she drew inspiration from suffuses the book without getting in the way. Where it lost half a star for me is pacing. The middle act lingers long in the studio while the inexorable rise of Nazism tightens outside, and I wanted a bit more of Hannah’s own Venus series on the page. Still, it’s insightful, compelling, and unfortunately timely.
Disclaimer: Links on this page may contain affiliate links, and purchasing a copy through them may generate a small commission for the site owner. A free copy of this book was provided by Henry Holt and Co. via Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.
