What was beautiful about this book is the loss. Particularly the void inside of Suze when she loses her twin and what she turns to to make her feel again. What moved me is the gorgeous writing used to describe the relationship Suze had with her twin. "Playgroup was a minefield. Nobody could really tell who you were talking about: yourself or Danny. The subjects of your speech were often confused and you and your brother babbled privately together, making up names for spiders, stomach aches and rain." It's an interesting mourning that the reader absorbs.The girl, Annette, slowly losing her eyesight has a mother keeping her world safe but confined. The artist slowly dying, living a life some take as a recluse whose thrown off the world as some artistic statement, as they believe his bottle paintings to be. Suze's father Peter, the famed landscape artist who seems a bohemian bear of a man, doesn't seem to have a lot happen in his chapters but was somehow vital to the whole of the novel. A lot isn't happening in this book, yet there is something about the stories that moved me. Maybe it's the damaged characters that nothing seems to fix, maybe it's the way Sarah Hall helped me see art through the character Giorgio, maybe it's too many things to name. Loved it. I really enjoyed ... or is that appreciated ... this book. The interweaving of the lives of four people associated with painting over two countries and several decades is achieved very cleverly with some wonderful description. I especially loved the part where Susan discovered her twin brother had been killed: the evocation of grief has rarely been done better. I also liked the chapters about Annette whose coming to terms with blindness was also described vividly and convincingly [though I was less convinced by the whole "Bestia" thing - have I missed something here?] Peter Caldicutt, too, is very well drawn [sorry for the pun] as the ex-hippie painter who kept to his old principles in middle age.As with all Sarah Hall's books, this is unusual with a new take on the world and for that should be applauded. It's not the one I've enjoyed most [Haweswater] or found most fascinating [Electric Michaelangelo] but yet again it made me look forward to her next offering.
What do You think about Portret Van Een Dode Man (2010)?
Chosen from my pile of library books. Looking forward to reading.
—gaby
