BOOK TALK: Mining themes of art and time

Rachel Cusk has been on my ‘would love to read but haven’t got round to it’ list for a while, but last week I read her book ‘Parade’, just out in June and published by Faber & Faber.
She is of my era, born in Canada in 1967 to English parents. She received the Whitbread First Novel Award in 1993 for ‘Saving Agnes’. Her work has been described as ‘experimental’, ‘a tad different’ – and ‘Parade’ did not disappoint.
The book is divided into four parts which could be considered short stories, yet we know they are connected through G, the artist. Some of the narration is in first person, some in second and some in third.
The first story, ‘Stuntman’, starts by telling the story of G, who began to paint upside down. We then switch to his wife’s telling of the transformation when her husband became a famous artist and how in moments of anxiety, she too began to imagine the world as upside down in order to see a different perspective and as an antidote to her anxiety. She also talks about art being the ‘pact of individuals denying society the last word’. I just loved that description.
In the further stories, we meet the other Gs who are artists. G is the link, even though they are different stories. Many philosophical themes are shared in each of the four parts of the story. We note an abhorrence for people who try to know their bodies through sport, claiming it is worse than religion. We hear about the unwritten codes in relationships of who is responsible for whom and the irretrievability of past time and illusion. The stories seem to be timeless and time is not important in the telling.
Reading this book I felt like I was inside a painting, exploring the world from the artist’s perspective, while also reflecting on my view of the world and how it might change while I am inside that painting.

Past and present
Anita Desai, an Indian writer who has been nominated three times for the Booker Prize, is another author who had been on my must-get-around-to-reading list. Her latest book, just out, is entitled ‘Rosarita’ and published by Picador.
We could say it is a novella, at 96 pages. It is a beautiful production, with a green sleeve and pink insets. Again, art is a theme that holds this book together. A young woman is sitting on a bench in a park in a town in Mexico and an elderly woman of colourful skirts and jewellery approaches and declares her to be the daughter of Rosarita, who came to Mexico from India to paint – saying she is an exact replica of how this artist Rosarita looked at her age.
The young woman denies any connection to Rosarita, claiming she is not her daughter. Yet doubt begins to set in as she reflects on the drawing which had hung in her bedroom through childhood. She did not know who had drawn the picture. Could it have been her mother? How could she possibly have been in Mexico?
She follows this woman from the park on a strange and interesting journey back into her own past, and into the woman in the park’s past. It is beautifully told, the story itself also like a work of art. It is a perfect little gift to give to oneself or another.

•   Bríd Conroy and her husband, Neil Paul, run Tertulia bookshop at The Quay, Westport.