THE LAST WEYNFELDT by Martin Suter translated by Steph Morris New Vessel Press, 302 pages reviewed by KC Mead-Brewer Martin Suter’s The Last Weynfeldt is an impressive work of intrigue and beauty. It sparks at the intersection of two very different people, Adrian Weynfeldt, mid-fifties, internationally renowned art expert, and Lorena, a shoplifting, small-time model who rips Adrian from his carefully crafted still life. Adrian earns his living by putting a “fair” price on beauty, authenticity, and originality. Lorena, often an anonymous commodity as a model, is also a thief, a woman who never pays society’s agreed upon price. And it’s through these differences—along with a whole host of other artists, liars, grifters, and moochers—that Suter brings out the novel’s central conflict between authenticity and forgery, the mass-produced and the one-of-a-kind. Of Lorena, Suter asks what does it do to a person to be dismissed as little more than copy or commodity: In the streetcar to the exhibition center [Lorena] took a free newspaper from the dispenser and sat down cautiously on one of the hard seats. Her picture was on the cover. Wrapped around the Ducelli in a provocative pose, with a seductive look for the camera. The caption read: “Superbike with ultra-transparent chassis and high-torque motor: the new Ducelli 7312.” She read the article carefully; she wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the main text either. Not even as an accessory, not even as something which stopped you from getting a good look at the bike. It was as if she didn’t exist. But just as Lorena longs to exist, to matter to someone, to matter to herself, Adrian is only too happy to remain locked up in the tradition-built cages of routine and old money.