In “Notes from an Exhibition” Rachel Kelly is an artist of some renown who, in the opening chapters, dies of a heart attack in her Cornish loft-studio. The story is then told via notes from a posthumous retrospective of Rachel's work.
Rachel is bipolar, a woman alternately wonderful and terrible to her loyal Quaker husband Antony and her four children. Each character has a very distinctive voice of their own as the book follows the relationship between mental illness and creativity.
As a young English postgraduate, Antony had rescued her in Oxford when she was pregnant and suicidal. He takes her to his childhood home in Penzance, where his devotion and his Quaker philosophy, combine to make marriage to him her haven. Only after her death does Antony discover the shocking secrets of her upbringing.
The story is told with a warmth and spirituality that transforms sometimes depressing material into an uplifting, enormously empathetic novel.
Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale - June 2009
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