In the opening chapter of the French writer Thomas Schlesser’s debut novel, his central character, a child of ten, experiences an hour-long episode of blindness. ‘Mommy, it’s gone all black!’ she screams. Although the girl’s sight returns as suddenly and inexplicably as it disappeared, her family and doctor are afraid that this could be the prelude to a more permanent loss of vision. When tests reveal no obvious physical cause for her momentary blindness, doctors advise that Mona should see a psychiatrist. But her beloved grandfather Henry (‘Dadé’) has other ideas. Assuring Mona’s parents that he will take her to the psychiatrist himself, he secretly decides to go to the museums of Paris instead and introduce her to a new painting every week. He hopes she will create ‘a kind of reservoir, deep in her brain, from which to draw some visual splendors’ if she were to go blind.

The ensuing narrative spans fifty-two visits across fifty-two chapters – a series of revelations. Mona’s bout of darkness recedes ‘like a blind rolling up’, and she is treated to an onslaught of colour. Schlesser’s novel is a masterclass in describing the experience of art, capturing how collateral elements – walking to the museum, noticing the other visitors – affect our responses. Take this description of the Louvre’s entrance hall:

The vast hall, so similar to those of stations and airports … was stifling. Yes, stifling, because most visitors in the crowds at a large museum don’t know what they want to do; they foment a generalized indecision, making the atmosphere stagnant, uncertain, and even a bit uneasy. 

Schlesser understands