{"product_id":"opening-night","title":"Opening Night","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eI met Mollie’s paintings before I met Mollie. \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShortly after the imposed isolation of the pandemic, Sara Baume came across a painting at a pop-up exhibition that so intrigued her that she was inspired to make contact with the artist. Mollie Douthit, a North Dakotan exile, was living and working alone in a log cabin down a ravaged laneway surrounded by rugged coastline. Sara and Mollie discovered they had much in common – a dysfunctional attitude towards companionship, a devotion to the daily rituals of their respective art practices, an affinity with nature. They started to meet every month for soup and punishing swims in the Atlantic.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSara fell under the spell of Mollie’s paintings, pictures that welded memory and reality, and gradually started to write about them, curious as to whether it might be possible to craft a book in the style of the paintings. But what she had not anticipated was that a settled period in her own life would coincide with a period of tumultuous change for Mollie, and soon she found herself grappling with more complex ideas.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExquisitely illustrated in full colour, \u003ci\u003eOpening Night\u003c\/i\u003e charts the contours of a friendship and explores ideas about community and nationality, about neurosis and mysticism, about love and pain and the power of art.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"book-page__review-text\"\u003eIt was a wrench to let go of this beautiful book. Sara Baum has written - through a friendship that is both fully lived and dutifully examined - about place, art and the strange absolutes that lie in the corners of a creative life. Unforgettable, full of love and the life-affirming joy of having a friend. — Ben Pester\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/blockquote\u003e\n\u003ch3 class=\"book-page__review-reviewer\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ch5\u003eGranta, 2026, 240pages.\u003c\/h5\u003e","brand":"Granta","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":62296929075587,"sku":null,"price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0729\/0424\/5566\/files\/2_8.png?v=1785840441","url":"https:\/\/jotbookshop.com\/products\/opening-night","provider":"Jot Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}