"Notes from an Exhibition" by Patrick Gale (4th estate, 2007)

An audio book. Chapters are headed by notes about an object or art-work (with biographical details). We learn that Rachel Kelly, a rather famous artist born in Canada, has died. We flashback to one day when she's working in her loft. Her husband Antony (69 and going deaf) is asleep. She's been tricking him into thinking she's taking her pills. Later in the day they hang her latest collection in a local gallery/shop.

Chapters are from the PoVs of Rachel, Antony, Garfield, etc. Some are before her death, some after. The chapters from Mauweena's PoV (when aged 10) and Garfield's PoV (when aged 7) have the most narrator's augmentation. In a supermarket Mauweena met GBH (Dame Barbara Hepworth).

Antony met Rachel when they were student age in Oxford. Their second meeting was at her hospital bedside when he learns that she tried suicide and was 2 months pregnant. He interrupts his studies to take her to Penzance, where his grandfather had brought him up. He's a devout Quaker (a theme that prevades the book). She likes it there, but after Garfield's birth, and within a paragraph or so, has a depression so deep that she overdoses. She subsequently realises that lfe-saving Lithium blunts the heights of her artistic creation.

The children are -

• Garfield (solicitor become violin-mender then solicitor) and Lizzy. Childless until late.
• Hedley, gay, with partner Oliver (art dealer), living in London.
• Mauweena - since giving up an LSE degree she's scarcely been seen. She still contacts Hedley. She may be schizoid. She lives in communes, etc.
• Petrac - Died young (in 1986?) but we don't know how.

The writing's thorough, unhurried. Any small observation leads to an association. When we're told what someone does, the sentence might end "as usual", so we build up portraits. When an observation about one of the offspring is made, there are comparisons with the other siblings; a slow accumulation of details.

Jack's an old friend of Antony, the family doctor. Secretly gay with a fisherman partner Fred, he's a respected abstract painter. Rachel hides her cartoon/caricature skills. First figurative, she becomes famous for her abstracts, then becomes figurative after Petrac's death, turning abstract again a month before her own death. In contrast, Jack gave painting up after Fred's possible suicide, though he had a popular piece in the Tate.

At the end of the wake Garfield finds out that he's not Antony's son. We already knew. He goes to visit his biological father in Oxford - brain damaged from a stroke, once an art professor. His half-sister tells him that he's not the only illegitimate child. He meets a stranger (woman) in a hotel that night and sleeps with her.

Weeks after her death Antony tries to research her ancestry and finds out that her real name was Joni Ransom. There's a chapter from her sister's PoV - she visits a few weeks after Rachel's death. Rachel ran away in her teens after a suidice attempt and was presumed dead until her sister received a mysterious postcard.

From Mauweena's PoV (she returns by chance soon after Rachel's death) we learn that she thinks she's bi-polar and that Petrac made a girl pregnant before he died in a crash. Mauweena gave evidence against the driver. The boy, Rocky, is being brought up by the girl and her husband - echoes of Garfield's upbringing.

In the penultimate chapter, Joni's in a Canadian mental hospital having ECT. She escapes with a girl who falls under a train. Joni adopts her persona. In the final chapter it's Petrac's PoV. After having sex for the first time at a party, and discovering that Hedley is gay, the novel ends with him walking along a country lane in the dark, hearing a car.

I became involved with the characters. I enjoyed much of the writing. Tension was built up. The pacing didn't change much whatever the speed of the thought or action. I got used to that.

Other reviews

• Rachel Hore (One would like to know more about Antony, especially whether he was fulfilled by his marriage to a woman he has to mother and who always claims everyone's attention.)
• Suzanne Elliott (It’s choc-o-block with drama – and characters, oh my god, so many characters – but despite the constant drama, the tension never seemed to build; the big reveal or twist would sneak past me and it was several pages before I realised I’d missed another character’s personal tragedy. Nothing is too trivial for Gale to try and tease out some suspense.)
• Savidgereads (Something that I also really loved about this book was the way that there isn’t a plot as such, Rachel is dead we know this, there are actually more plots than you could believe. [] There was a little downside with this; I never really felt I quite got to know Anthony. There are many books that use the death of someone, as they open, to show the dynamics of a family under a time of great emotional pressure. This causes any cracks that may have gone unnoticed previously to once and for all crumble, as secrets are revealed and tensions mount. ‘Notes from an Exhibition’ is such a book at a first glance, however I think Patrick Gale manages to write one which is quite different as while having the drama of death and family secrets at its heart it never falls into melodrama.)
• Heloise Merlin (The novel has an air of “just telling a good yarn” about it that I find very 19th century, and even its apparent breaking up of chronology is somewhat half-hearted, as the present-day parts are actually told in order, with flashbacks inserted between their orderly progress. And finally, and most disappointingly, the language: Notes from an Exhibition is very well written, but in a very conventional way that never even attempts to push the reader out of their comfort zone. … As beautiful as Gale’s language is, it falls flat when it comes to tackling his more extreme subjects, just seems too well-mannered to come to grips with things like abstract painting or bipolar disorder. … But I do not want to sound too grumpy: Notes from an Exhibition is by no means a bad novel; quite to the contrary. The characters have considerable depth, and the reader follows their fates with unflagging interest; also, as I mentioned before, the novel really excels at giving each his or her unique voice. It is also a very emotionally involving novel)