Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #187380 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Iain Pears deals in a very sophisticated form of dark narrative; his elegantly written novels (of which The Portrait is a very persuasive example) now have a keen following. This book has the same impeccable storytelling and quietly malignant tone as the one that made his reputation, An Instance of the Fingerpost. The new novel’s punning strapline, ‘vengeance is an art’, refers to the art theme that is Pears’ métier. In his books, civilised people perform very uncivilised actions, with the world of art a microcosm for the darker reaches of the human soul.

Set on the bleak and windy island of Houat near the coast of Brittany, The Portrait describes the retreat into isolation of the painter Henry MacAlpine, who has performed a Gauguin-like cutting off of his previous life, leaving a successful career in London (not to mention rich patrons and enthusiastic gallery owners) behind him for a more spartan existence in this unvisited spot. Several years pass, and the reclusive MacAlpine is called upon by the first person he has seen from his old life in four years. This is the art critic William Nasmyth, whose approbation (or otherwise) can make or destroy an artist's career. He has come, he says, to sit for a portrait. What follows is a remarkable battle of wills between two very driven individuals; a psychological duel that has echoes of the mordant writing in the early plays of Harold Pinter. The other analogy that springs to mind for Pears’ compelling and disturbing novel is the Ingmar Bergman film Persona, similarly set on a remote island, which also treats of a personality shift between two strong-willed individuals. During the course of the sitting, the real subject of the novel becomes clear through the conversation of the two men: this is a scarifying narrative of thwarted desire, cruelty, suicide and even murder. This spare and economical novel exerts a grip from the first paragraph, and its two main protagonists are drawn with assiduously observed detail. --Barry Forshaw

Review
'A wonderful, grimly entertaining novel.' Sunday Telegraph 'A revenge fantasy to relish.' Independent on Sunday 'Genuinely creepy.' The Times 'A tense tale of revenge, where the creative bites the critical back.' Observer 'An exquisite miniature that explores the roles of artist and critic with wit and gore.' Evening Standard 'This is an atmospheric tour de force of historical writing, as it is of narrative skill.' Independent 'Illicit love, betrayal and murder darken the pages of this atmospheric disquisition on the art world.' Daily Mail 'Taut, disturbing!full of interesting observations about the late nineteenth -- and early twentieth-century art world !Mesmerising.' Spectator 'A delicious Victorian shill descends as MacAlpine reveals and withholds details of past betrayals.' Scotsman Praise for 'An Instance of the Fingerpost': 'This is a novel that combines the simple pleasures of Agatha Christie with the intellectual subtlety of Umberto Eco. It is a landmark in the genre.' John Sutherland, Sunday Times 'Enthralling! 'An Instance of the Fingerpost' is a brilliant achievement !wholly absorbing.' T.J. Binyon, Evening Standard 'A slippery thriller of audacious ingenuity.' Robert Minghall, Independent on Sunday Praise for 'The Dream of Scipio': 'Combining the visceral pleasures of a thriller with the more intellectual excitements of a novel of ideas.' Sunday Telegraph 'Combines dazzling erudition with assured narrative skills to offer glimpses of some of history's darkest corners.' Independent on Sunday 'Vivid, admirably imagined, ultimately very moving! This is a novel of the very highest ambition!Immediate, sensuous, beautiful.' Allan Massie, Scotsman

Sunday Telegraph
'...It's obvious the artist plans to murder his sitter – the suspense, artfully sustained, lies in finding out why.'

Customer Reviews

Dark but keeps you guessing to the last page
Pears has an incredible mind - he can weave together so many different strands, narratives and perspectives (as he proves brilliantly in An Instance of the Fingerpost and The Dream of Scipio). This time he has a single narrative - it is not even a conversation; merely the one-sided responses/account by an early 1900s Scottish artist painting on his remote and blustery island off northern France, and he talks with his former art-critic-mentor and now sitter. We are gradually let into the secret as he unpacks all the events, words and feelings that have brought them both to this point. I should have seen the signs of where it was going but didn't anticipate the end exactly - but in retrospect it all makes perfect sense. Not Pears at his true best (i preferred the two mentioned above) but certainly up there.

Rather wearisome
I came to this novel with every determination to love it, having heard good things about the author. However, I'm afraid that the approach of having a complete monologue telling the story just doesn't work, and here is far too long. Don't get me wrong - there is a very interesting story here (though something of a cliche), but it's hidden and very much distanced from the reader by the technique used. Sometimes I felt that I came so close to a moment of drama but it slipped away even as I was pursuing it. I think it would also be helpful if at least one of the characters was attractive or charismatic in some way. Unfortunately they're not.

Frankly, it was a relief to get to the end. Please, authors, no more monologue novels - just show us the story directly!!

"I am confessing my sins...before I have committed them."
In a change of pace from his previous intricately plotted and lengthy novels, Iain Pears here writes a novella-length study of an artist painting a three-part portrait of the most famous art critic in England in the years of 1910 - 1913, a man with whom he has had a significant history over many years. The critic, William Nasmyth, has come to Houat, a small island off the Brittany coast, where the artist, Henry Morris MacAlpine, has been living in exile for several years.

As he paints Nasmyth's portrait during the course of several days, MacAlpine addresses him about their past in London, the state of the art world and its artists during these years of post-impressionism, their mutual friends and lovers, and Nasmyth's role in the success or failure of MacAlpine's artist-friends. Sometimes angry and hostile, sometimes snide, and occasionally sentimental, MacAlpine reveals the sordid details of Nasmyth's life and ego-driven personality, which he intends to use in the portrait, a triptych--his view of Nasmyth as he was, as he is now, and as he will be.

The artist, articulate and observant, feels totally realistic, a person we come to know, not by what he says, but by what he implies and then forces us to conclude. Nasmyth, we see, loves power, the making or breaking of artists. MacAlpine's friend Evelyn and his model Jacky are depicted realistically, and the reader, who comes to know them through MacAlpine's reminiscences about them, empathizes with them for their treatment by Nasmyth. Gradually, the reader becomes aware that MacAlpine intends to make Nasmyth pay for past crimes, and though the reader may figure out generally how the novel will conclude, Pears has saved some surprises. When the novel draws to its close, the reader feels the rightness of the conclusion.

Because the novel is a dramatic monologue, the reader comes to know only the speaker and his point of view. No conversations with other characters exist to show how they interact with each other, and the reader never sees other characters in action. This leads to a novel which "tells about" what happens, instead of recreating it and allowing the reader to share it. The author must build suspense and tension through words, rather than through action scenes, a device which leaves the reader at arm's length. Filled with personal details which reveal the heart and soul of a struggling artist, the novel is a fascinating glimpse of the art world during the age of post-impressionism and of one artist who seeks revenge on a critic. Mary Whipple