Enjoyable read. I do like family sagas. Felt a bit unfinished. I'd like to know what happened between Hedley and his partner. ( )

'Notes from An Exhibition' is a story, largely about the impact a bi-polar artist, wife and mother has on her family. The book is composed of a series of chapters, each opening with a note attaching to art forming part of a posthumous exhibition. In a non-linear style, it reveals periods in lives of each family member, told through either their own, or another's perspective. The family's Quaker faith and practices weave throughout this story as much as the artist's personality and work. I think this is a really lovely book though I do have one reservation, being that I felt the ending was a bit rushed. ( )

Beautifully written. Chapters run in the order of a retrospective art exhibition, so not in chronoligical order. Mystery is solved on the final page. I couldn't put it down. ( )

An empathetic portrait of a family living with an eccentric artist, for more see http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/200... ( )

A story of a mentally disturbed painter who's illness is considered to be both a blessing and a curse by her family. Most of her paintings were described vividly that you can't help imagine it and get struck how brilliant all of her paintings are.Not exactly a happy book to read but indeed a thought provoking one. A family in the end endures a tragic lost and at the same times weathers it.This novel portrays love, intelligence, humour well written. ( )

magnifiek beschreven leven van een schilder, moeder en vrouw met manisch depressieve kanten. Haar man, kinderen en zus beschrijven stuk voor stuk hoe het is om met haar te leven. geweldig boek,
Magnificent, unsentimental beautifully written.
From his website:
He now lives in the far west, on a farm near Land’s End with his lover, Aidan Hicks. They raise beef cattle for the open market and winter cauliflowers (broccoli) for Sainsbury’s. His current ambition is to perfect the art of reversing a tractor and trailer around a corner. ( )

Bit disappointed with this one after devouring his early six or seven novels some years back. I didn't mind the switching back and forth in terms of chronology and points of view. And I quite liked the technique of telling the story through the notes from Rachel's posthumous exhibition.
But it wasn't till halfway through the book that I felt involved enough to care about the characters. Yes, it's not a plot-driven novel but more about the dynamics of the family. This would not typically be a problem for me. But when you're switching the chronology around and deliberately hold back key pieces of the puzzle (who is Rachel really?, when and how did Petroc die? what happened with Morwenna), you focus attention on the plot and when there's not much to it, it doesn't quite work.
So if it's more about characters, you have to make them more appealing and worth caring about, and I didn't really till quite late on.
Also, his switching points of view didn't work well as he didn't always stick strictly with one point of view in a given passage. and some of the ways in which he expressed a point of view wasn't convincing. He put thoughts in a child's point of view that I just couldn't imagine a child expressing to him/herself.
That having been said, by the end of the book, I did feel I'd read a reasonably convincing portrait of a particular family life. ( )

I did enjoy this, a convincing portrait of the main caharcter. ( )

This is the first book I've read by Patrick Gale and I was impressed. The story centres around the life of a recently deceased artist Rachel Kelly who suffered from bipolar disorder. There is no plot as such. Instead the story of Rachel's life unravels through the eyes of family members. The author is in fact painting the artist's life as she herself would have created one of her paintings.

The novel's strength lies in the characterisation. Gale describes his characters sympathetically and sensitively whilst also portraying their faults and weaknesses. ( )

Gorgeous read. I went to a random reading where Patrick Gale read out the first chapter (along with other bits and pieces). I had never heard of him or the book. It was being released the next day. I immediately went out and bought it and DEVOURED it.

There are lots of elements of his fictitious family that aroused my interest at the time - the effect of living with bi-polar disorder, quakers, eccentric artist, estrangement of children who grow up around mental illness...lots of things that rang a few personal bells and lots to chew on but Gale does it all with a light touch and through a thoroughly fleshy cast of characters. The sort of book where not a lot happens but an awful lot happens with far more humanity than most authors are able to muster. One of those times where I couldn't stop reading but at the same time wanted to stop myself because I knew I would be sad to leave his world and its people behind. And goddammit, I really was gutted when I was done.

I hope (and he hinted at his reading that maybe he wasn't quite done with all of these characters) there will be a follow up.

In the meantime, I'll wait until I have forgotten it sufficiently to justify reading it again... ( )

I found this book utterly compelling.
Patrick Gale writes wonderfully of complex charaters, without them being at all unbelievable. the dynamics of family life are beautifully captured, and I found myself researching aspects of the book, such as the Quaker faith, as I read. I loved the technique of each chapter opening with a description of a painting relevant to the chapter which followed.
My one criticism is that I felt the last two chapters should have been the other way around for a more satisfactory end. Without wanting to spoil, I felt that the story would have come full circle had this been the case, rather than feeling a little "up in the air" . ( )

Patrick Gale is one of the British writers of my own generation (can't really say "young writers" any more!) that I admire most. He hops about quite a bit between styles and influences, but what he comes up with is usually interesting and rewarding, and he has a remarkable talent for dissecting family relationships.

In this book he uses the conceit of an exhibition catalogue to reconstruct the life of his central character, the painter Rachel Kelly, through a series of incidents seen from different viewpoints and at different moments in her life. This structural technique can be frustrating for the reader, because it takes a long time for the bits to start slotting together, and because of the trauma of repeatedly losing touch with viewpoint characters with whom we thought we were establishing an intimate relationship. However, I think it is an effective technique, and it does reflect the way that we often learn about other people's lives in the "real world".

Beyond the family relationships, the three big themes Gale throws into the mix are visual art, bipolar disorder, and Quakerism. The relationship between mental illness and creativity is a fairly hackneyed theme in fiction, of course, but this configuration of it was obviously an interesting challenge to Gale, who has previously written mostly about musical creativity (he's a musician himself) and Alzheimer's disease. As an ignoramus about painting, I felt that he did a pretty good job of conveying the experience of seeing and creating abstract paintings - certainly on a par with Joyce Cary's The Horse's Mouth, which he mentions as his favourite novel about a painter.

It was nice to have Quakerism at the centre of a novel, rather than a few token Quaker characters at the periphery, but Gale is writing as an outsider attracted by the idea and impressed by the Quakers he's met: he doesn't really manage to convey what it might feel like to be on the inside, as a birthright member. His characters can't quite get over thinking of what Quakers do as a bit odd and what the outside world does as normal.

Iris Murdoch is an obvious influence, as ever, and the chapters set in 1950s Toronto can't help having a touch of the Margaret Atwoods about them, but it's a nice sign of how Gale has become an established writer in his own right that we can amuse ourselves spotting joky little allusions to his earlier books, especially in the "catalogue notes" that introduce each chapter. ( )

I struggle to describe the plot of this book. Like many Patrick Gale novels, the point of view is now one character's, in the next chapter another's, and chapters are set in various points of time. A structure of this kind always leaves a surprise or two until the end.

The starting point is the death of Rachel Kelly, a painter, which gives her family a chance to reassess their own lives, reflect on their memories of her and try to uncover some of her secrets.

Not bad but I don't think this was the most exciting Gale that I've read. ( )

Notes From An Exhibition synopsis from Amazon:

Renowned Canadian artist Rachel Kelly — now of Penzance — has buried her past and married a gentle and loving Cornish man. Her life has been a sacrifice to both her extraordinary art and her debilitating manic depression. When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies painting obsessively in her attic studio in Penzance, her saintly husband and adult children have more than the usual mess to clear up. She leaves behind an extraordinary and acclaimed body of work — but she also leaves a legacy of secrets and emotional damage it will take months to unravel. A wondrous, monstrous creature, she exerts a power that outlives her. To her children she is both curse and blessing, though they all in one way or another reap her whirlwind, inheriting her waywardness, her power of loving — and her demons. Only their father’s Quaker gifts of stillness and resilience give them any chance of withstanding her destructive influence and the suspicion that they came a poor second to the creation of her art.The reader becomes a detective, piecing together the clues of a life — as artist, lover, mother, wife and patient — which takes them from contemporary Penzance to 1960s Toronto to St Ives in the 1970s. What emerges is a story of enduring love, and of a family which weathers tragedy, mental illness and the intolerable strain of living with genius. Patrick Gale’s latest novel shines with intelligence, humour and tenderness.

What a lovely book. Only 374 pages, and well worth the read.

Throughout the book, Gale deals with the issues of the illness of bipolar, death, faith and family. His description of the art work was beautiful and I could easily picture the work. He began each chapter with a descriptive plaque like you would find beside an artefact in a museum, which helped connect you to Rachel Kelly.

I loved the character of Antony, how he took in Rachel and looked after her, and gave her a family. He seemed the strong, silent type and I just adored him.

As someone who is intimate with depression I found Gale wrote extremely sensitively and well. The story was not in chronological order however and did jump between characters and times. I liked the story that unfolded however and the twists and turns that came with it.

However, I have found myself wanting more. I would have liked more character depth and to learn consequences of actions that we read about.

Overall, this was a good book, I recommend it!

8/10 ( )

Notes from an exhibtion ist der englische Titel dieses Romans und scheint Kern und Problem des Romans auch besser zu treffen. In jedem Kapitel werden Menschen vorgestellt, eingeführt und beschrieben, sodass eine Spannung und Neugier aufgebaut wird. Leider lässt der Autor diese Personen im nächsten Kapitel wie heiße Kartoffeln fallen und wendet sich anderen Menschen zu, und selbst die bekannten Namen sind aufgrund eines anderen Alters oft fast unerkennbar. Das soll sicherlich eine faszinierende Collage ergeben, lässt mich als Leser allerdings ziemlich verwirrt zurück, denn die manisch-depressive Mutter, Hauptperson der Geschichte, bleibt ebenso blass wie ihre vielen Kinder (wäre weniger wohl mehr gewesen?), ihre Schwester oder ihr Mann. Hier hat sich ein Meister des Wortes zu keinem richtigen Thema durchringen können, und ist darum zu ungenauen Geschichtchen ausgeufert. Schade!

A rather disappointing novel. Gale apparently didn't succeed in bringing together all those little pieces to just one great big story. That's why every start of a new chapter turns out to be a mayor disappointment because once again our narrator has left behind all those persons and characters he just introduced to turn his attention to something else. What a shame because now, I don't know more about the the painting mother or the other characters who just remain very plain clichee like characters (the caring gay son, the wild hippy daughter, the over eager son who wants to please and - of course - the o so understanding husband).... puuuleaasse... ( )

One thing is for sure: Patrick Gale can write. But this novel remains detached. It is a pity that he has not refined himself to a few main characters, Garfield for example is totally nonrelevant for the story and in my opinion Gale should have focused on Rachel, Antony and Hedley. An attempt is made to show the effect of Rachel's mental disorder on her inner circle. I can understand it, but I do not feel it, and that is the main flaw this novel has. ( )

Prior to writing this, I have just been to Amazon, to find out what others were saying about the book.. and the reviews are rather mixed, which didn’t really surprise me.

Personally speaking, I loved it. The story jumps around, slowly revealing more about the various characters, and their life together. The tale actually starts with Rachel’s death, and as it progresses, you gradually find out more about her, her life as an artist, and her life with bipolar.

Entwined throughout this is the story of the rest of her family, exploring how they were affected, in various ways, by Rachel. All of their various stories come together, painting an overall picture.

Some of the reviews seem disappointed with a lack of ’story’ or plot, but this isn’t a plot driven book - it’s about the characters and their interactions. They all have their own stories to tell, but as in life, these are subtle.

Maybe this book isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but most should find something to like. It reminded me of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, and Maggie O’Farrell’s work. I will certainly be looking out for more by this author.

Wonderful wonderful. One of those books you don't want to end. The life story of a female artist of the Newlyn school and her husband and children, told through the eyes of one of her sons. Mainly flashbacks, with chapter links to exhibition notes for a (presumably posthumous) retrospective. There is nothing sentimental in Gale's portrayal of the mother/artist but he builds to a breathtaking denouement, signalled from the earliest chapters, of the circumstances surrounding the death of her youngest son.

A gripping tale, which made me read it quickly. Punctuation a bit sparse, which made it difficult to understand sometimes. Good holiday reading. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2008/02... ( )

Like a pebble in the pond, the ripples well out from the central character, a woman artist suffering from bipolar depression, who dies early in the novel and whose life is reflected back on by others, as well as by first person from herself. The shifts of time and space flow and reverberate. And all the characters, including some quite minor ones are three-dimensionally drawn.

It is also in many respects a very domestic piece about the interrelationship between family members and their friends. ( )

Patrick Gale has developed his characteristic style of shifting narrative voices and timescales to a very high degree here. The characterisation is consistent throughout the novel's timeshifts and the flashbacks bring out Rachel's attractive qualities as well as her difficult nature. Her paintings were beautifully described so that they sang in my imagination's eye. I particularly liked the way that the ownership of paintings given in the Notes starting each chapter hinted at different and emerging relationships between the characters than were apparent at the relevant point in the text. The only slight failure, for me, was the character of Hedley who seemed a bit under-drawn and too good to be true - lacking the subtle qualities of characterisation and narrative elsewhere in the novel. I look forward to reading this again. ( )