Call number
Collection
Genres
Publication
Description
From their childhood, Jack Rathbone has enjoyed the adoration of his sister Gin. When both attend art school in London, it is a painful wrench for Gin to watch Jack fall under the spell of Vera Savage, an older, flamboyant artist. Jack and Vera run off to New York within weeks and, from a bruised and bereft distance, sister Gin follows the couples progress to Port Mungo, a river town in the swamps of the Gulf of Honduras. There, Jack devotes himself to his art, while Vera succumbs to infidelity and a chronic restlessness, which even the birth of two daughters cannot subdue. In his spellbinding narrative, Patrick McGrath tracks these individuals across decades and continents- the latter-day Gauguin figure Jack, his buccaneering mate Vera and their two girls, Peg and Anna, cast adrift in their parents' chaos - as observed by Gin, their far from detached chronicler. It is ultimately a world of dark tropical impulses and Manhattan art market forces, where a mysterious death is swathed in tight complicit secrecy, and the imperatives of narcissism and art hold human beings in outlandish thrall.… (more)
Subjects
User reviews
This time we have a couple of ill-fated lovers who indulge in a very 1950s style of bohemian living. Typical enough, but the circumstances are tilted and the narrator of their story definitely biased. She is willfully blind to her brother Jack’s faults. She willfully scandalizes Vera, his lover and mother of his children. She willfully aggrandizes his art and his calling. He is the perfect father and brother at all times. Even his faults are made magnificent and part of his higher calling. We know this cannot be true, but still, McGrath makes it all seem so reasonable. So right.
The descriptions of life in the wretched Port Mungo are shrouded by the mists of time and distance. We weren’t there. Our narrator wasn’t either, but yet we find the expected truth of what we’re told comforting. Of course Jack is an exile; he wants perfection and won’t settle for anything less. Artistic credibility and integrity are noble pursuits indeed. Vera’s abandonment of him and their daughters is almost on cue. We expect it and raise Jack even higher in our esteem in the face of her cowardice and selfishness.
But then the cracks appear. Why did Jack so easily let Anna, his surviving daughter, go to his proper, upstanding brother Gerald? This in the face of the zeal with which he persevered as Peg’s father; his martyrly devotion to show up Vera’s shortcomings so starkly. Why has his return to the New York art scene been so tepid and lackluster? Why has Vera continued to fall back into his life with such unexpected regularity? Why does Anna display behavior so contrary to her Sussex upbringing? The façade crumbles and reality is bathed in the full light of Vera’s scorn and Gin’s disbelief. Very well done and an intriguing, hypnotic tale. The Rathbone Curse indeed.
This is my fifth McGrath novel and even though his style pervades, he manages to create widely diverse situations and characters. This time we have a couple of ill-fated lovers who indulge in a very 1950s style of bohemian living. Typical enough, but the circumstances are tilted and the narrator of their story definitely biased. She is willfully blind to her brother Jack’s faults. She willfully scandalizes Vera, his lover and mother of his children. She willfully aggrandizes his art and his calling. He is the perfect father and brother at all times. Even his faults are made magnificent and part of his higher calling. We know this cannot be true, but still, McGrath makes it all seem so reasonable. So right.
The descriptions of life in the wretched Port Mungo are shrouded by the mists of time and distance. We weren’t there. Our narrator wasn’t either, but yet we find the expected truth of what we’re told comforting. Of course Jack is an exile; he wants perfection and won’t settle for anything less. Artistic credibility and integrity are noble pursuits indeed. Vera’s abandonment of him and their daughters is almost on cue. We expect it and raise Jack even higher in our esteem in the face of her cowardice and selfishness.
But then the cracks appear. Why did Jack so easily let Anna, his surviving daughter, go to his proper, upstanding brother Gerald? This in the face of the zeal with which he persevered as Peg’s father; his martyrly devotion to show up Vera’s shortcomings so starkly. Why has his return to the New York art scene been so tepid and lackluster? Why has Vera continued to fall back into his life with such unexpected regularity? Why does Anna display behavior so contrary to her Sussex upbringing? The façade crumbles and reality is bathed in the full light of Vera’s scorn and Gin’s disbelief. Very well done and an intriguing, hypnotic tale. The Rathbone Curse indeed.