Patrick Gale, Notes from an Exhibition

(London: Harper, 2008)

I’m not quite sure that I agree with Stephen Fry’s description of the book as ‘complete perfection’, but it’s a delicious read.  It’s located around Falmouth - a beautiful part of the country and one which I know well, and although I’m not sure how well the descriptions will evoke the place for whose who are unfamiliar with the area, there were enough details to prompt memories of the coast, and the light that painters so delight in.  It’s the story of the Middletons: Rachel, a brilliant but mentally unstable painter from Canada, who exhibits under the name Rachel Kelly; Anthony, a Cornish birth-right Quaker schoolmaster, and their four children, Garfield, Morwenna, Hedley and Petroc; and more specifically, of how the children individually respond to their upbringing by a bipolar  mother for whom the mania of the illness is necessary for artistic fulfilment, and a father whose equilibrium is sustained by his Quaker beliefs. 

I love the structure chosen for the book.  As becomes evident as the book progresses, each chapter is an explication of the notes from a retrospective exhibition of Kelly’s work.  The narrative follows the order of the exhibits rather than the chronology of events, allowing the author to introduce questions over the identity of Rachel and over the cause of tragedies in the family’s life, and to create momentum for the story by remaining silent on key questions until the final page. 

The novel takes on many enormous issues – mental illness, gender, artistic drive versus social expectations of motherhood, and although not tackled, they are treated with delicacy, resulting in a respectful and sympathetic portrayal of mental illness, and a portrayal of Quaker beliefs and attitudes that left me envious.  It’s a novel for which mood is as important as action.  Trying to think about events independently of their perception by the characters, the story becomes melodramatic, even though centring on the extraordinary character of the mother, simply because the mother is so extraordinary – showing both how much care was required to create both balance in events and the children’s response.   

The book excels in the treatment of Kelly’s abstract art – both in the descriptions of her work and the source of their abstract content. 

Gale foundered on the story behind Rachel’s arrival in Britain, and one or two elements jarred slightly, and with hindsight seem to trade too heavily on the stereotype of an artistic community as essentially eccentric. 

Al;though this isn’t great literature, it’s a thoroughly absorbing read, and, I imagine,  will be enormously successful as a book-group book.