Rue Matthiessen's New Novel Explores Art and Intrigue on the East End

Summer is the season for books — and when it comes to selecting a title to dive into on the East End, readers often gravitate toward beach-themed mysteries or romance novels.

While many of these books are written by authors with a cursory awareness of this region, this summer, there is a new novel on bookstore shelves that was penned by an author who really knows this place.

Rue Matthiessen has lived in Sag Harbor for decades, but her local roots (and writing chops) go much deeper. As the daughter of two writers — Deborah Love and the legendary Peter Matthiessen — she grew up on the family’s property near the ocean in Sagaponack, surrounded by the literary and artistic crowd who were her parents’ contemporaries.

“Art was a pervasive subject for me growing up in Sagaponack and in East Hampton in the ’60s and ’70s,” Matthiessen explained in a recent interview. “There were a lot of arguments and discussions. They were writing, painting, making sculptures, living cheap — by and large because it was cheap here then — and they had raging arguments about politics and what they were doing.

“What did literature mean anymore? What did painting a picture mean anymore?” she continued. “It was a serious art culture. There were a number of people who were after something big. Something genuine. They wanted it to have importance and impact.”

Much of that energy and the debate can be found in the pages of “Woman with Eyes Closed,” Matthiessen’s new (and first) novel, which was published by Latah Books on June 17. In recent weeks, Matthiessen has been speaking about her new book at events across the region, and on Sunday, August 17, at 3 p.m., she will take part in a reading and Q&A about “Woman With Eyes Closed” at Greenport’s Floyd Memorial Library.

Also coming up on September 13, at 5 p.m., Matthiessen will speak at Bridgehampton Museum’s “Literary Legends Series” at the Nathaniel Rogers House. Titled “Courage for the Earth, Peter Matthiessen in Sagaponack,” the event will be presented in partnership with Canio’s Books and she will read passages from her father’s work and reflect on the life of this celebrated local author, explorer and naturalist. Matthiessen recently wrote about her family in “Castles & Ruins: Unraveling Family Mysteries & Literary Legacy in the Irish Countryside,” her 2024 memoir which revisits a long-ago trip to Ireland she took with her parents and older brother.

When it comes to writing fiction, it should come as no surprise that for her first novel, Matthiessen would use art as her jumping off point. “Woman with Eyes Closed” is a mystery that revolves around a European art heist, and it takes place in two very disparate locales — The Netherlands, where a trio of young thieves steal priceless works of art, and Sagaponack, where a wealthy Russian oligarch new to the beachfront community may or may not know where the purloined paintings have ended up.

Also, in Sagaponack, Matthiessen introduces readers to Perrin, the 35-year-old daughter of Abstract Expressionist painter George Clayton, who was a contemporary of Pollock and de Kooning but never made it big. A widower, George lives modestly in a small house in need of repair that is over-run with his own paintings, none of which he can part with. Meanwhile, Perrin’s husband, Jack Triplett, is also an artist. But unlike Perrin’s father, he is a wildly successful one, having made a name for himself with colorful, fabricated sculptures that lack depth, but appeal to the masses. He and Perrin live in an expensive glass box on the beach, just four houses away from the Russian who demolished a beach shack (formerly George’s studio) to build his own massive, showy house in the dunes. What, exactly, is in the oligarch’s house is a mystery, which is why Kit Hobbs (a.k.a. Christopher Pinsmail), a spy for MI6, has arrived to infiltrate the Sagaponack art scene (and Perrin’s less than happy marriage).

On the other side of the ocean, the art thieves are doing their best to avoid being nabbed by the authorities. Though “Woman with Eyes Closed” may be purely fiction, Matthiessen’s jumping off point for the art-themed plot is based on a true story.

“This is a fictionalization of a real-life heist that took place in Rotterdam in 2012, where a couple of amateur thieves were able to break into the Kunsthal Museum and make off with millions and millions of dollars’ worth of art,” Matthiessen explained. “When I first discovered that heist in 2012 and started following the story, I realized the thieves were really not trained at all. They weren’t art world people. They were third-rate petty criminals who walked into this museum and walked out with millions of dollars of art. How did that happen and how embarrassing for the museum?

“I was captivated by that story and followed it all along.”

Among the seven modernist paintings stolen in the actual 2012 heist was Lucian Freud’s 2002 painting “Woman with Eyes Closed,” which Matthiessen found particularly inspirational.

“I really liked the name, and as this real-life story unfolded, the back story of this particular painting interested me very much,” she said. “At that point, the idea for a novel was born. There were so many places to go with it.

“Another thing that landed in my lap was the fact that the character Perrin is the woman with the eyes closed,” she added. “She’s landed in a marriage that is subpar and has to contend with it, and she has put blinders on.”

In Matthiessen’s novel, readers also spend time in Amsterdam with brothers Luuk and Piet, age 25 and 19 respectively, and Inecke, a young woman in her late teens — who have stolen not seven, but four paintings from the Kunsthal museum, including a Picasso, two Monets and one work that shares its title with the Freud painting, but in the book is attributed to an artist named Hochberg. Also involved in the crime is Leonie, the brothers’ mother.

“I took the original Romanian thieves and made them Dutch, and I added a third thief, the woman — a young femme fatale who has the two brothers wound around her finger,” Matthiessen said. “Also, I created a mother for the brothers — a funny, tough character who works in a brothel in Amsterdam, and wants a better life.”

The novel shifts between the thieves’ efforts to cover their tracks and the characters in Sagaponack. While set in present day, in her book, Matthiessen gives a longing nod to what Sagaponack used to be. There are shades of familiarity that longtime East End residents will surely recognize from the time when neighborhoods south of the highway were a series of endless dunes, picturesque farm fields, humble beach shacks and quiet roads. It’s certainly familiar territory for Matthiessen, who feels a sense of nostalgia for the region and the people who populated it a half century or more ago.

“Writing a mystery is a lot of threads. You have to connect them and make them make sense. It’s challenging, because I’m not normally that kind of person,” said Matthiessen. “But I feel like in order to write convincingly in a novel, you have to know a place inside and out.”

One of the themes Matthiessen wanted to focus on in her book was the transition that has occurred locally since she was a child. She recalls being struck by the changing values on the East End when she worked in real estate several years ago. “I had to preview some beach shacks for rent, so I went down to this group of shacks previously owned by the White family in Sagaponack.

“I walked into this one place, and I remembered my brother and I spent several summers in this shack on stilts, almost in the dunes,” she said. “It was so bare bones, it was so idyllic, and I remembered what it was like. I have strong feelings about those shacks, and I was just keeping it in my mind. We all idealize our childhoods. I do look back in fondness at the simpler things. I thought, I just want to go back there, like when I was a kid.”

When asked if her character Perrin is a thinly disguised version of herself, Matthiessen responded, “Perrin is much taller, thinner and beautiful than I am. Also, it’s the art world, not the literary world. I think I chose the art world because I go to see everything. When I’m sitting at my desk struggling with words, it’s restorative to go and have a purely visual experience.”

Beyond the mystery of the art heist itself, “Woman with Eyes Closed” asks the deeper questions about the price we place on meaningful things in our lives — including our relationships with one another.

“The book delves into the art scene and questions, ‘What is the value of art and the value of people?’ That’s one of the things I wanted to address in the book and it’s examined on many levels,” Matthiessen said. “There are different aspects to this book. It’s about espionage, yes, but it’s also about art and artists. That was one of the things that was really impressed upon me. Plenty of people are trying to make art and trying to write — it can be difficult on the family. So, there’s a cost. There’s also something quite beautiful about being able to produce this work. It’s a many layered thing.

“I’m just a fan,” she said of her love for art. “I grew up in this world, but I carried it on because that’s where I found nourishment. Many of my friends in the area are artists, so it’s easy for me to channel what they do and how they think. George Clayton is a hybrid of my father, but he’s completely his own person.

“I loved writing George. He’s one of these sort of gentile, but also rock and roll, counterculture guys,” she said. “He’s also concerned with the fine production of his art, or anyone’s art. He’s appreciative on a really authentic level. I feel like sometimes around here with all of us moving in the stratosphere of big money, what is the core thing you care about in the end?

“If you’re touched by a piece of art, its worth, its value, is right there. We’ve got to get back to that.”

The Floyd Memorial Library is at 539 First Street in Greenport. For details, visit floydmemoriallibrary.org.