de Iain Pears
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de Iain Pears
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de Iain Pears
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de Iain Pears
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de Iain Pears
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From Publishers Weekly
Justly praised for his complex historical thrillers (An Instance of the Fingerpost; The Dream of Scipio), Pears scales down to a simple tale of vengeance told by a narrator obsessed with destroying the man he once called his friend and mentor. Henry MacAlpine has abandoned his comfortable life as a celebrated portraitist in early 1900s London and fled to a tiny island off the coast of Brittany. To that lonely spot he lures William Naysmith, the British art world's most famous critic, with the promise of painting his portrait. In the course of the narrative, MacAlpine recalls the development of his artistic talent with the advice and praise of the ambitious Naysmith. The suspense lies in the gradual revelation of Naysmith's ruthless use of power, yet the double crime for which MacAlpine holds him accountable comes as little surprise. While this novel never approaches the sly cleverness and tingling suspense of John Lanchester's A Debt toPleasure, which it otherwise resembles, readers will enjoy some period ironies, as when MacAlpine expresses contempt for the upstart French Impressionists, while the contemptible Naysmith discerns their true genius. Anybody in the business of criticism, whether it be artistic or literary, will be chastened by Pears's indictment of a critic's power to make or ruin reputations.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Pears' art mysteries set in Rome are delightful entertainments, both witty and substantive, and his large-scale literary thrillers (An Instance of the Fingerpost, 1998; The Dream of Scipio, 2002) combine vivid historical backdrops with multifaceted human dramas. Now he takes an entirely new tack, offering a kind of literary miniature, a dramatic monologue in which an early-twentieth-century Scottish portrait painter, Henry McAlpine, in self-exile on a remote island off the coast of France, speaks to the subject of his latest work, a critic who first promoted McAlpine and then turned against him. As the critic sits for his portrait, McAlpine rehashes their careers, bitter irony dripping from his every word as he leads up to a vicious indictment against his former mentor for his treatment of a fellow painter. The monologue structure makes this a difficult story to get into, but gradually we become fascinated by the speaker--first in sympathy with the grievances he harbors against the critic and then appalled as the full scope of his revenge plot becomes clear. Much like Robert Browning in his classic dramatic monologues (the novel, in fact, bears striking resemblances to Browning's "My Last Duchess"), Pears presents a classic unreliable narrator, although the degree of his unreliability is left tantalizingly ambiguous. Don't expect this to appeal to the wide audience that made Fingerpost a best-seller, but for those who prefer the subtlety of a small canvas, where the perfidy of the human heart is revealed in shadow, Pears' "portrait" is an exquisite little gem. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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