Notes From An Exhibition

Author: Patrick Gale

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $24.99 AUD
  • : 9780007254668
  • : HarperCollins Publishers Australia
  • : HarperPerennial
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  • : 0.294
  • : September 0000
  • : 197mm X 130mm
  • : United Kingdom
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • :
  • : Patrick Gale
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  • : Paperback
  • : 508
  • :
  • : English
  • : 823.914
  • : very good
  • :
  • : 374
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Barcode 9780007254668
9780007254668

Description

The new novel from the bestselling Patrick Gale. Renowned Canadian artist Rachel Kelly -- now of Penzance -- has buried her past and married a gentle and loving Cornish man. Her life has been a sacrifice to both her extraordinary art and her debilitating manic depression. When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies painting obsessively in her attic studio in Penzance, her saintly husband and adult children have more than the usual mess to clear up. She leaves behind an extraordinary and acclaimed body of work -- but she also leaves a legacy of secrets and emotional damage it will take months to unravel. A wondrous, monstrous creature, she exerts a power that outlives her. To her children she is both curse and blessing, though they all in one way or another reap her whirlwind, inheriting her waywardness, her power of loving -- and her demons!Only their father's Quaker gifts of stillness and resilience give them any chance of withstanding her destructive influence and the suspicion that they came a poor second to the creation of her art. The reader becomes a detective, piecing together the clues of a life -- as artist, lover, mother, wife and patient -- which takes them from contemporary Penzance to 1960s Toronto to St Ives in the 1970s. What emerges is a story of enduring love, and of a family which weathers tragedy, mental illness and the intolerable strain of living with genius. Patrick Gale's latest novel shines with intelligence, humour and tenderness.

Awards

Winner of Independent Booksellers' Book of the Year Award: Adults' Book of the Year 2008.

Author description

Patrick Gale was born in 1962 on the Isle of Wight. He was educated at Winchester and Oxford and now writes full time.