Books of the Month

'How to Paint a Dead Man' by Sarah Hall

Sarah Hall's writing just keeps getting better and better. I enjoyed her first two books, Haweswater and The Electric Michelangelo; thought her third,
The Carhullan Army, quite an achievement; but I'm just hugely impressed by this, her fourth.

It's a book comprising four stories - each different in style, time and voice. Two are set in England, two in Italy, and the connections between the four narrative strands are handled with extreme subtlety. All share similar concerns: art, the self, the body and the world around us, but each is a fully realised and totally engaging world of its own.

Susan is a photographer living in London, dealing not very well with the unforeseen and unexperienced loss of her twin brother. Her story takes place in the present day and is told in the rarely-accomplished second person (which is particularly apt). Giorgio is an Italian painter of still lives, writing in his declining years in the 1960s about his life, loss and surroundings. The story of Peter, Susan's father, and himself a landscape painter and friend of Giorgio, is told some thirty years later. And finally, Annette is a young girl, recently turned blind, once taught by Giorgio but now tackling demons (artistic and all too real) of her own. If all that sounds complicated, well, it does take a little working out, but the connections between the stories work on different levels, are very satisfying, and would undoubtedly repay several readings.

Overall two things impress me most about this book. First, the strength of those four individual voices. Each is equally compelling, wholly believable, to the extent that you feel each could be a book on its own. Secondly, the skill in weaving together these disparate narratives, connecting the timelines and shifting grammatical perspectives, and allowing each to subtly enrich the others, is really something. It's no wonder the book has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Highly recommended.

Susan Tranter

Back to main page