GatesyRead

  This is the first of two books about artists recommended to me after I performed a reading of my then work-in-progress-novel which features an Australian artist.  Second Place is a strange little work form a well-reputed author, Rachel Cusk, with ten previous novel publications, as well as works of non-fiction. The plot is summarized on the back cover: “A woman invites a famed artist to the remote coastal landscape where she lives … But as a long, dry summer sets in, his provocative presence soon twists the human patterns of her secluded household”. The Afterword tells us that Second Place “owes a debt” to Mable Dodge Luhnan’s 1932 memoir Lorenzo in Taos , a text that deals with the time D.H. Lawrence came to stay with her in New Mexico. In other words, this book leans on another, and the shared theme is the desired and then regretted presence of the artist figure in one’s second home. (Like having an artist-in-residence in your own backyard, complete with ego, vision, and live-in-l

  I am not sure if I needed to read S weet Tooth , but as a literary spy novel (not quite a thriller) it entertained me well enough. One thing Ian McEwan seems to manage – I say this without proper qualification – is to write a novel from the point of view of a young woman quite convincingly. There’s a bit of a twist on this premise at the end, which you are most welcome to guess at. Serena Frome is a bishop's daughter. The bishop seems a decent man but clearly not close to his family, and embarrassed by anything he can’t sort out from behind a desk. She heads to Cambridge to study Mathematics, being good at it, but sadly not a genius. At university, she starts to write a column on her reading of literature in what one imagines are well-phrased but not necessarily wise reviews. She meets her first boyfriend, and then falls for a married professor – an MI5 man – and so her secretive career begins. It is the 1970s and the Cold War is in full swing. Frome’s conservative beliefs, c

  Juan Mars é ’s The Snares of Memory begins with 48 numbered responses to what appears to be written replies to interview questions posed to a writer/novelist. In this way, Mars é introduces the idea of a writer working on a commissioned film script concerning a murder which took place in 1949. Many of these answers contain refutations of conventional ideas, or ethical statements (“I couldn’t give a damn about national identity. It’s an emotional swindle”). Even better, we have to guess at the questions being asked (the response to Question 40 is simply “Pass”).   10) My next novel will deal with the tricks and snares created for us by memory, that high-class whore.   11) No. If I tell you what it’s about, I’ll spoil it, because this novel is a kind of tromp-l’oeil. Nothing in it is what it seems, starting with the title. (p. 8). So far, so good – Mars é had me hooked from the very beginning. The script, the narrator tells us early on, is based on a true event – a prostitu