I Really liked this book it was easy for my little girl to follow along. The pages are oversized and very colorful!! We read the book to my daughters class and all the children enjoyed it. The children could see and participate from the rear of the classroom. The book is set up like a large colorful alphapet flash card. THE CHARACTER LEONARD HAS A NEW AND FRESH PERSONALITY.! THE WHOLE CLASS FELL IN LOVE WITH THE BOOK.

I wish I can give 'The Burnt Orange Heresy' the same sort of glowing review the others have posted. However despite its originality (at the time it was written) and overall quality I found myself curiously bored by it all. Why? Well...

The story is certainly bizarre. A rather obnoxious art critic is obsessed with getting a glimpse of paintings by a living art legend who happens to be a recluse. No one has seen this fellow's work in decades. Our art critic will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Think deceit, betrayal and murder and you've got the right idea. Sadly, I think such art critics actually exist in this world. ;-)

But Willeford unfortunately devotes too much time during most of the book blathering on about the art world: competitiveness between critics/reviewers, different styles of art during the last century, and how to judge the quality of art. For this reader, who couldn't give a monkey's about art, became quite bored with it all. Towards the end when the story picked up I was too disengaged to really appreciate the shock/horror of our art critic from hell.

...Bottom line: perhaps best left for those who truly hate art critics and love Charles Willeford.

What I liked best in this book was that there was not merely a surprise ending, but surprise twists throughout. The sole drawback is that the dialogue became a bit teachy at time when the main protagonist was explaining the artist that the book centers around to his love interest (or not). On the other hand, that dialogue was realistic; it reminded me of real conversations with critics and experts that do tend to get long and boring. The book is short but the pace of events is perfect, and enough happens by the end to make it interesting.

Willeford's interrogation of the battle between Christianity and Platonism with Sophistic postmodernism is so concretely placed within Miami's seething Bohemian art world as a rotten critic takes on the sacred role of art in our society and has to confront the massive realm of the western aesthetic clear back to the Renaissance shows what a powerful mind Willeford had built for himself. Forget Joyce and Umberto Eco. Willeford's the man to show us the problems of relativism, and the importance of Kantian aesthetic judgment in creating a lasting culture. Delhi, NY