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There is something about Russell Smith's writing that enrages people. He reliably produces shimmering fiction--and one of the
Globe and Mail's few consistently intelligent columns--but he is still unfairly pressed into service as a whipping-boy for all sorts of social ills: Torontocentrism, conceptual art, leather trousers.
Muriella Pent, a novel that returns to the Torontonian arts scene that established Smith as a serious fiction writer, may not win him many new friends, but it should delight his fans.
The book's plot doesn't so much develop as slump into compulsively readable entropy. Muriella Pent, an enviably wealthy socialite widow with a mysterious Montreal pedigree, busies herself in the wake of her unimpeachable husband's death with the usual arty occupations of Toronto's upper crust: sitting on committees, dabbling in writing, and raising funds for various worthy causes. In a moment of exuberance, she volunteers to house a writer-in-residence on behalf of the City Arts Board Action Council. The writer that they produce, a Caribbean poet named Marcus Royston (who hasn't published poetry in close to 20 years) meets the Council's politically correct yardsticks on paper, but proves to be a charming, libidinous, and big-mouthed aesthete. Royston has little time for the niceties of Toronto arts-politics, and promptly sets to offending--or seducing--everyone in sight, including his formerly straitlaced hostess. Soon, Muriella is not only hosting a writer, but allowing her mansion to be used for nude photography, scorched-plastic sculpture, and all-night parties complete with diplomats, DJs, and gossip columnists. Smith also graces the book with a subplot involving two University of Toronto classmates--Brian Sillwell, another member of the Action Council, and Julia Sternberg, a young friend of Muriella's--whose constricted and largely sexless lives are considerably changed by an acquaintance with Royston.
Muriella Pent is Smith's first full-blown novel since Noise, and it outshines its predecessors in almost every respect. His prose has grown richer, and his characters largely transcend their status as satirical grotesques. Traces of Evelyn Waugh's influence are still everywhere, and Smith does well by them, moving into a mode of outrageous but sombre satire that stands up to a book like Vile Bodies quite nicely. Readers who have dismissed Smith as a fashionista or a glib hipster-novelist should read Muriella Pent and reconsider their position; those who already know that he is one of Canada's smoothest and funniest urban storytellers can brace themselves for another bravura performance. --Jack Illingworth
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
“Smith writes some of the most luminous prose in Canadian fiction. . . . He mines and refines the best of what has come before on the way to making it his own. Also, Smith is entirely credible when writing female characters. . . . One catches quiet echoes of Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf.”
—
The Gazette (Montreal)
“[Marcus] Royston is one of the most convincing characters I’ve come across in Canadian fiction. . . . Interspersed with the biting wit is an almost elegiac quality to the writing.”
—
The Globe and Mail“This is a valuable addition to the Canadian canon, rivaling the early work of another skilled satirist of the urbane and urban, Mordecai Richler.”
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Ottawa Citizen
“The best Canadian novel published in 2004 was
Muriella Pent…. Russell Smith is one of the best stylists of my generation. His prose is exact, surprising, and written by a man with a fine ear.”
—Andre Alexis, author of
Childhood, in
The Globe and Mail“The heart of the novel beats in time with D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller and all the writers before and after them who, when you sweat their books down to the essentials, say simply that sex is an artery of life.
Muriella Pent plays out on a bigger canvas than Smith has worked on before. It's the work of a good novelist who wants to be a better novelist. And has become one. There's a gifted and sensually alert writer at the wheel here.”
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National Post“Deserves to stand as one of the strongest Canadian novels of the year”
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Edmonton Journal“Irresistibly poignant…. Readers looking to spice up their book club will have plenty to talk about with Russell Smith’s latest,
Muriella Pent. "
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Flare“Read any page of
Muriella Pent at random and it will become immediately obvious that you’re in the presence of a talented writer. . . . The really exciting aspect of Muriella Pent is the masterful way Smith presents his two central characters.”
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The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo)
“We need writers like Smith to remind us of the grim truth of this strange country…. It’s a funny, poignant, ambitious, and highly entertaining book and the boldest work yet in Smith’s bleak oeuvre.”
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Books in Canada
“[Russell Smith is] something of a literary heir to Margaret Atwood”
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The Toronto Star
“A novel of manners about ambitious young downtowners of an artistic bent,
Muriella Pent is adroit and amusing. And in its depiction of one exceptional character, Caribbean poet Marcus Royston, it is very good indeed.”
—
Maclean's
