In 1999, Dr Elizabeth Clarke, who works in an L.A. museum, flies to Greece to procure (for maybe $6 million) a newly discovered statue. She's about 35, suffers from bad migraines, and has very recently divorced from Julian (who she liked because he was all surface). A sister, Margaret, died when a teenager. She's in competition with Maddison (who she's had sex with in the gallery) to replace her boss William. She knows that William may know about her affair with Maddison. She's warned not to be cold to the prospective sellers.
Niko, married to Theo (female), seems to want to be friends. The museum staff show her another statue very recently found in the sea, just like the one she's come to buy. It's obviously a fake - what should she say?
After a meal with Theo and Niko (Niko is death haunted, and want to give up smoking) they drive her to a private club. She's introduced to Leon. She realises she doesn't have her wallet, so she has to let Leon pay for things. She tries coke for the first time. She wakes next morning in her room, not knowing now she got there, thinking that she may have had sex (this risk-taking while on a career-defining mission, alone, is surprising. I'd have expected her to panic without her wallet). When tired or getting a migraine she hallucinates - about sex, about Margaret, etc.
Niko gives her photos of the statue. Among them are suggestive photos of Theo. She knows about Greek representations of the female form. She wonders how much of her life (at work and home) is performance. She's conscious of her body as a studied object.
An insect wing is stuck on the statue overnight. No damage. She thinks she has a STD, and finds a tampon deep inside her. She flies to Athens to give a talk. Niko and Theo come too. She's questioned by a student about the morality of buying history and taking it from its country of origin. She says galleries look after the pieces and make them available to the public. She’s interested in value systems - assessment of art and female bodies. But if a beautiful body is depicted, which value system dominates?
They return. Maddison turns up. His first child’s just been born. They sleep together. Theo discovers them next morning. She later tells Elizabeth that she and Niko have an open relationship.
The statue’s found in in the fountain, its head replaced by a plastic bag with a cicada inside. She goes to a party, drinks too much, wounds a goat with a gun. At the party she tells a young boy how she'd gone swimming with Margaret in a lake, just the two of them, and she'd drowned. When she gets back from the party, Niko tells her that he and Theo are leaving the island. They have sex. Next day Theo takes artistic nude photos of her. Maddison calls from the States to say that the purchase has gone through, that William has had a bad stroke, that William is being investigated for monetary and sex-related indiscretions, and that she and Maddison are promoted. She turns down the promotion and tramps around Europe. She learns that Theo is pregnant with twins, and that she was involved with the decapitation.
At the end she's in an Albanian museum. A partially deaf little girl tries to climb onto a statue's plinth.
The language is noteworthy - "His image drained into the shadows"; The Mediterranean's rhythm is "like a sleeping breath", etc. The main character's contradictions help emphasise the novel's conceptual underpining - Art vs Life; Theory vs headless Art, etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment