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thebobsphere's review against another edition
4.0
I remember reading an article by Marie Kondo stating that if we keep books longer than two years on the TBR stack, there’s a possibility that we won’t read them and when we do, we won’t like them.
Well she is WRONG
Having read and hated Sarah Hall’s second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, I admit I was bit curious to see if this would provide the same reaction. In actuality I rather liked it. The book is ambitious, interesting and manages to tell a strong story.
How to Paint a Dead Man comprises of four narratives: One is a painter who likes doing still lives of bottles, narrative two is a blind artist who visits his grave, three is an up and coming artist who corresponds with the painter and the fourth narrative consists of the up and coming artist’s daughter recounting her career as a curator and is mourning her dead twin.
Although it sounds complicated, Sarah Hall manages to weave all the narratives together coherently and touching upon themes such as grief (death features quite a bit here), how painting techniques have evolved and how art can reflect life. I have probably said in the past that I am a sucker for intertwining narratives and this worked for me.
Saying that it’s not perfect, as in Electric Michelangelo, sometimes I find Sarah Hall’s writing style to be a robotic and now and then that occurs. However Sarah Hall does give each narrative a different voice so to counteract the stiff prose, there are moments where it becomes delicate, not unlike a painting itself.
To go back to Marie Kondo’s nonsense: How to Paint has been on my TBR for 14 years and I actually enjoyed it. That’s all I’m saying.
Well she is WRONG
Having read and hated Sarah Hall’s second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, I admit I was bit curious to see if this would provide the same reaction. In actuality I rather liked it. The book is ambitious, interesting and manages to tell a strong story.
How to Paint a Dead Man comprises of four narratives: One is a painter who likes doing still lives of bottles, narrative two is a blind artist who visits his grave, three is an up and coming artist who corresponds with the painter and the fourth narrative consists of the up and coming artist’s daughter recounting her career as a curator and is mourning her dead twin.
Although it sounds complicated, Sarah Hall manages to weave all the narratives together coherently and touching upon themes such as grief (death features quite a bit here), how painting techniques have evolved and how art can reflect life. I have probably said in the past that I am a sucker for intertwining narratives and this worked for me.
Saying that it’s not perfect, as in Electric Michelangelo, sometimes I find Sarah Hall’s writing style to be a robotic and now and then that occurs. However Sarah Hall does give each narrative a different voice so to counteract the stiff prose, there are moments where it becomes delicate, not unlike a painting itself.
To go back to Marie Kondo’s nonsense: How to Paint has been on my TBR for 14 years and I actually enjoyed it. That’s all I’m saying.
categj's review against another edition
5.0
Sarah Hall is an exceptional writer. Her novel How to Paint a Dead Man is a beautifully written book, relating the story of three central characters who are linked through family and art. It is a poignant tale of the relationships that bind us - family, loves and friendship. Ms Hall depicts very real and engaging characters and writes about their feelings and experiences in a way that brings their stories to life. I definitely would recommend this book and I am looking forward to reading some of Sarah Hall's other works.
nerdbrarian's review against another edition
4.0
"How to Paint a Dead Man" was amazing on so many levels. Sarah Hall skillfully connects disparate characters across continents and times, using her handle on point of view as the breadcrumbs that keep the reader from getting lost. I'm still amazed at how easily she brings you into a scene, as if you are not reading a description but looking around yourself only find you've fallen into present-day London or post World War II Italy. Her tale of loss and death, and the way humans cope with those life moments, was one of the best books of 2009, of the decade and, quite possibly, of my life as a reader.
millennial_dandy's review against another edition
5.0
‘Do not be afraid to paint the reverse side of the sunflower’
I'm fairly good at picking books that I know I'll at least like, even if they aren't books I'd necessarily think about again. As a result, my general ratings for books tend to hover between 3/5 and the ocassional 4/5.
For me, a 5 star book isn't necessarily a book where I loved the characters or a book that I found especially exciting. A 5 star book for me is a book that even while I'm in the middle of it, I know I'll be reading again. A 5 star book is one that makes me feel like reading it again will reveal something I missed but know is there, or, more rarely, that I understood completely the first time but can't stop thinking about.
'How to Paint a Dead Man' falls into the former category. By about the fifty page mark, I knew I needed my own copy because I'd be coming back to it.
As all the best books are, 'How to Paint a Dead Man' is very hard to summarize. It's a nesting doll of four stories, each told from a different point of view: first person, third person limited, third person omniscient, and even second person. At first I rolled my eyes a little; it seemed like a gimmick. And some readers may well feel that indeed it is-- just a means for author Sarah Hall to show off her writing skills. But given the incredibly tight reveal of information, and the care taken in developing each story, each character, I'm not convinced it wasn't an incredibly deliberate choice. That Hall very carefully crafted each narrative around each of the POV styles, that she really thought about which POV would be best suited to each story.
At least on this read-through I wasn't able to come to a conclusion as to what exactly the significance of this or that character having this or that POV was, but it's something I'll be thinking about upon re-read.
Thematically, 'How to Paint a Dead Man' is very much an exploration of loss and grief. A lot of death.
Though each character is fully fleshed out, there is a clear division between the active and passive characters: the passive characters are designed to be overall more likeable and 'pure' whereas the active characters make many choices that, while some are understandable, are much easier to criticize and judge. These two roles are equally split with the oldest and youngest characters being passive, and the middle-aged characters being active. It's also curious that the two 'pure' characters are Italian (a teacher and student), and the two morally grey characters are British (a father and daughter).
These are things I'd like to get into more the next time I read the novel, but the exploration of loss and grief are what stood out to me on the surface level this time.
Hall seems to want to show us that while loss is a painful, traumatic experience, it's still possible to be optimistic about our capacity to survive it, even unto our own further tragedies and eventually, our own deaths.
Suzi and Giorgio, one grieving the death of her twin brother and one dying of cancer, both wrestle and make peace with their grief.
For much of the novel, Suzi drowns her pain at losing her beloved twin in a self-destructive and all-consuming affair with a colleague. And every moment not spent in his embrace is spent on mourning, on crying, on reminiscing in ways that leave her incapable of moving on. But when in the end she has a 'coming to Jesus moment' as a result of the affair, she has two important realizations:
She realizes that in order to make peace with death and dying, she might need to be more like her brother was and focus on living. In the end, this seems to set her free.
Giorgio tackles the life/death dichotemy from the other side. He, who is dying, encourages one of his students, saying: "‘Do not be afraid to paint the reverse side of the sunflower,’” P.73. Unlike Suzi, who must learn that it is ok to live on after someone close to you dies, Giorgio ruminates on what it means to be the one to die. He has to accept a series of losses on that journey as his health and his strength fail him, and he has to put his affairs in order. He talks often of a favorite dog he had; lame in both of his back legs but nonetheless, according to Giorgio, an incredibly loving, faithful companion. This dog had died years before Giorgio learned of his terminal cancer, but he seems to consider the dog a representation of sorts of how we go on and do what we can to be happy and content until the end. Though by his final chapter, Giorgio barely has the strength to get out of bed and is increasingly in pain, he comments: "the view from the veranda is marvellous, and I linger." (p.107)
Hall seems to be saying with these two narratives that we ought to remember that life and death are two sides of the same coin, and that as long as one has lived fully, death shouldn't scare us (if we are the dying) and shouldn't paralyze us (if we are the survivors), though in both cases we may have some regrets. But these regrets oughtn't be the sum of our lives (or deaths).
It's a message that isn't unique by any means to this novel, but it is presented here in such a beautiful way that it hardly feels redundant, and given that death and loss are still things that frighten most people (they certainly frighten me), tackling this subject is by no means beating a dead horse.
That being said, in focusing on the philosophical side of death and dying, Hall steps slightly outside the realism found in much of the rest of the novel in Giorgio's chapters. Because we are reading his words as written in his journal, she can conveniently side-step the suffering that so often accompanies dying by having her character choose not to dwell on this. I think this in some ways does a disservice to her message.
While the aforementioned narratives contain a lot of optimism about the capacity of people to overcome the fear and trauma around death, Hall is careful to complicate the simplistic take that accepting loss will make everything better. We leave Suzy on a high philosophical note, but her life choices as she's prossessing her grief have consequences.
Moreover, we have the tragic story of Giorgio's student, Annette, who, after losing her sight to illness as a teenager, rises to the challenges of her blindness despite her mother's incredibly grating certainty that her daughter's life is now both ruined and meaningless. Annette accepts the loss of her sight with grace. Rather than complaining, she relishes the memories she has of being able to see, but chooses not to think of not being able to create more of those memories as a tragedy. Instead, she learns to 'see' the world through touch and continues to assist in her family's flower-selling business with the help of her uncle.
Hall could have left the story here, but she chooses to instead highlight the very real ways in which bad faith actors and people with nefarious intentions can take advantage of situations like Annette's. In a better world, she would be able to exist as a blind person without the real handicap of other people being able to use that condition to take advantage of and hurt her. We rejoice with her at her discovery that the people to whom she sells flowers don't short-change her, but as a reader it's heartbreaking to discover alongside her that optimism and thinking the best of people doesn't keep you safe.
The cruel irony of Annette's ultimate fate is that for the entire narrative her mother insisted that she be kept at home out of a religously-induced mania about the dangers of the outside world and how the Devil would be after her poor, defenceless daughter. Some of that fear did seep into Annette, though not to the degree that she was willing to give up her independence. And unfortunately, when the worst happens, her mother's superstition and religious conservatism leave Annette without the tools or wherewithal to defend herself.
Importantly, nowhere in the text does Hall seem to suggest that what happens to her is in any way Annette's fault or in some way a punishment for her naivety. It's made very clear that the blame for bad actions lies with the people who commit them.
The harsh lesson here seems to be: live fully despite hardship, but stay vigilant to how our hardships can make us vulnerable.
And also, let's please heed the wise words of Shakespeare: 'hell is empty and all the devils are here.'
As a person who lives, will experience loss, and will die, stories like 'How to Paint a Dead Man' are important. It is trite but it is true that these are things every person must in some manner come to terms with, and Hall does a great job sparking a dialogue on how to do that.
This is a book that is a joy to read. The mundane, and even the most horrific, unpleasant topics become these gorgeous butterflies of prose under Sarah Hall's pen.
To cite a few examples that run the spectrum:
"The writer might opt to be nocturnal — he with his dark pupils and his head full of owls.” –p.27
"The artistic efforts of men are indicative of our human openness, our inquisitiveness, I think. When we attempt to evaluate, or to obviate, we seldom guess correctly. Our minds are born nervous, in darkness. We are subterranean beings. We must learn by the senses and continue to be instinctual, to use the antennae. […] We must look at the reality, and then look again at the illusion. We must see beyond. For what shakes the eye but the invisible?” p. 107
"It came out of nowhere, the rage. Suddenly you wanted to slap her so hard. You felt such anger towards her. Her apathy, her indecision, her refusal to wake, get up and reclaim her life, or once and for all shut off. Surely there was some choice she could make, you thought, some flickering pilot light in her brain, that could be turned up, that could take charge, rousing her wasted limbs? All the years of stand-by, her visitors held like hostages in this room, ransomed by the slimmest of hopes, and equal to her in their impotency. All the years of dependency and money, waiting for her second coming.” P. 75
An absolutely stunning novel. I've only managed to scratch the absolute surface with this initial analysis.
Can't wait to read it again.
I'm fairly good at picking books that I know I'll at least like, even if they aren't books I'd necessarily think about again. As a result, my general ratings for books tend to hover between 3/5 and the ocassional 4/5.
For me, a 5 star book isn't necessarily a book where I loved the characters or a book that I found especially exciting. A 5 star book for me is a book that even while I'm in the middle of it, I know I'll be reading again. A 5 star book is one that makes me feel like reading it again will reveal something I missed but know is there, or, more rarely, that I understood completely the first time but can't stop thinking about.
'How to Paint a Dead Man' falls into the former category. By about the fifty page mark, I knew I needed my own copy because I'd be coming back to it.
As all the best books are, 'How to Paint a Dead Man' is very hard to summarize. It's a nesting doll of four stories, each told from a different point of view: first person, third person limited, third person omniscient, and even second person. At first I rolled my eyes a little; it seemed like a gimmick. And some readers may well feel that indeed it is-- just a means for author Sarah Hall to show off her writing skills. But given the incredibly tight reveal of information, and the care taken in developing each story, each character, I'm not convinced it wasn't an incredibly deliberate choice. That Hall very carefully crafted each narrative around each of the POV styles, that she really thought about which POV would be best suited to each story.
At least on this read-through I wasn't able to come to a conclusion as to what exactly the significance of this or that character having this or that POV was, but it's something I'll be thinking about upon re-read.
Thematically, 'How to Paint a Dead Man' is very much an exploration of loss and grief. A lot of death.
Though each character is fully fleshed out, there is a clear division between the active and passive characters: the passive characters are designed to be overall more likeable and 'pure' whereas the active characters make many choices that, while some are understandable, are much easier to criticize and judge. These two roles are equally split with the oldest and youngest characters being passive, and the middle-aged characters being active. It's also curious that the two 'pure' characters are Italian (a teacher and student), and the two morally grey characters are British (a father and daughter).
These are things I'd like to get into more the next time I read the novel, but the exploration of loss and grief are what stood out to me on the surface level this time.
Hall seems to want to show us that while loss is a painful, traumatic experience, it's still possible to be optimistic about our capacity to survive it, even unto our own further tragedies and eventually, our own deaths.
Suzi and Giorgio, one grieving the death of her twin brother and one dying of cancer, both wrestle and make peace with their grief.
For much of the novel, Suzi drowns her pain at losing her beloved twin in a self-destructive and all-consuming affair with a colleague. And every moment not spent in his embrace is spent on mourning, on crying, on reminiscing in ways that leave her incapable of moving on. But when in the end she has a 'coming to Jesus moment' as a result of the affair, she has two important realizations:
Poor Danny, people said, why did it have to be him? Life is so cruel. He got such a raw deal. [...]No. Danny wasn’t unlucky to be killed. The world was unlucky to lose him.” P.54
“The funny thing is, you’ve been thinking so long and hard about death that you’ve lost sight of its fraternal twin, its obverse pole. This is the prerogative of grief you suppose. […] You have been so consumed that you’ve almost forgotten about the other side, the affirmation, the positive stroke. Life.” P.107
She realizes that in order to make peace with death and dying, she might need to be more like her brother was and focus on living. In the end, this seems to set her free.
Giorgio tackles the life/death dichotemy from the other side. He, who is dying, encourages one of his students, saying: "‘Do not be afraid to paint the reverse side of the sunflower,’” P.73. Unlike Suzi, who must learn that it is ok to live on after someone close to you dies, Giorgio ruminates on what it means to be the one to die. He has to accept a series of losses on that journey as his health and his strength fail him, and he has to put his affairs in order. He talks often of a favorite dog he had; lame in both of his back legs but nonetheless, according to Giorgio, an incredibly loving, faithful companion. This dog had died years before Giorgio learned of his terminal cancer, but he seems to consider the dog a representation of sorts of how we go on and do what we can to be happy and content until the end. Though by his final chapter, Giorgio barely has the strength to get out of bed and is increasingly in pain, he comments: "the view from the veranda is marvellous, and I linger." (p.107)
Hall seems to be saying with these two narratives that we ought to remember that life and death are two sides of the same coin, and that as long as one has lived fully, death shouldn't scare us (if we are the dying) and shouldn't paralyze us (if we are the survivors), though in both cases we may have some regrets. But these regrets oughtn't be the sum of our lives (or deaths).
It's a message that isn't unique by any means to this novel, but it is presented here in such a beautiful way that it hardly feels redundant, and given that death and loss are still things that frighten most people (they certainly frighten me), tackling this subject is by no means beating a dead horse.
That being said, in focusing on the philosophical side of death and dying, Hall steps slightly outside the realism found in much of the rest of the novel in Giorgio's chapters. Because we are reading his words as written in his journal, she can conveniently side-step the suffering that so often accompanies dying by having her character choose not to dwell on this. I think this in some ways does a disservice to her message.
While the aforementioned narratives contain a lot of optimism about the capacity of people to overcome the fear and trauma around death, Hall is careful to complicate the simplistic take that accepting loss will make everything better. We leave Suzy on a high philosophical note, but her life choices as she's prossessing her grief have consequences.
Moreover, we have the tragic story of Giorgio's student, Annette, who, after losing her sight to illness as a teenager, rises to the challenges of her blindness despite her mother's incredibly grating certainty that her daughter's life is now both ruined and meaningless. Annette accepts the loss of her sight with grace. Rather than complaining, she relishes the memories she has of being able to see, but chooses not to think of not being able to create more of those memories as a tragedy. Instead, she learns to 'see' the world through touch and continues to assist in her family's flower-selling business with the help of her uncle.
Hall could have left the story here, but she chooses to instead highlight the very real ways in which bad faith actors and people with nefarious intentions can take advantage of situations like Annette's. In a better world, she would be able to exist as a blind person without the real handicap of other people being able to use that condition to take advantage of and hurt her. We rejoice with her at her discovery that the people to whom she sells flowers don't short-change her, but as a reader it's heartbreaking to discover alongside her that optimism and thinking the best of people doesn't keep you safe.
The cruel irony of Annette's ultimate fate is that for the entire narrative her mother insisted that she be kept at home out of a religously-induced mania about the dangers of the outside world and how the Devil would be after her poor, defenceless daughter. Some of that fear did seep into Annette, though not to the degree that she was willing to give up her independence. And unfortunately, when the worst happens, her mother's superstition and religious conservatism leave Annette without the tools or wherewithal to defend herself.
Importantly, nowhere in the text does Hall seem to suggest that what happens to her is in any way Annette's fault or in some way a punishment for her naivety. It's made very clear that the blame for bad actions lies with the people who commit them.
The harsh lesson here seems to be: live fully despite hardship, but stay vigilant to how our hardships can make us vulnerable.
And also, let's please heed the wise words of Shakespeare: 'hell is empty and all the devils are here.'
As a person who lives, will experience loss, and will die, stories like 'How to Paint a Dead Man' are important. It is trite but it is true that these are things every person must in some manner come to terms with, and Hall does a great job sparking a dialogue on how to do that.
This is a book that is a joy to read. The mundane, and even the most horrific, unpleasant topics become these gorgeous butterflies of prose under Sarah Hall's pen.
To cite a few examples that run the spectrum:
"The writer might opt to be nocturnal — he with his dark pupils and his head full of owls.” –p.27
"The artistic efforts of men are indicative of our human openness, our inquisitiveness, I think. When we attempt to evaluate, or to obviate, we seldom guess correctly. Our minds are born nervous, in darkness. We are subterranean beings. We must learn by the senses and continue to be instinctual, to use the antennae. […] We must look at the reality, and then look again at the illusion. We must see beyond. For what shakes the eye but the invisible?” p. 107
"It came out of nowhere, the rage. Suddenly you wanted to slap her so hard. You felt such anger towards her. Her apathy, her indecision, her refusal to wake, get up and reclaim her life, or once and for all shut off. Surely there was some choice she could make, you thought, some flickering pilot light in her brain, that could be turned up, that could take charge, rousing her wasted limbs? All the years of stand-by, her visitors held like hostages in this room, ransomed by the slimmest of hopes, and equal to her in their impotency. All the years of dependency and money, waiting for her second coming.” P. 75
An absolutely stunning novel. I've only managed to scratch the absolute surface with this initial analysis.
Can't wait to read it again.
rollotreadway's review
3.0
An odd thing, this. Take, for example, one of the four interwoven stories: a grieving woman, who is having an affair. Like a thousand other literary characters, having an affair to deal with this or that or whatever. There is nothing in it at all unusual or distinctive, it follows the tramlines without diversion. When revelations come, they land softly and unremarkably.
Yet, for all that, it is a very elegantly shaped novel. Its writing draws you in, its style smoothes the passage from beginning to the end. I found myself very much wanting to continue, wanting to find such artful words eventually put to a greater purpose than run-of-the-mill stories. And, in the end, disappointed that they weren't.
Yet, for all that, it is a very elegantly shaped novel. Its writing draws you in, its style smoothes the passage from beginning to the end. I found myself very much wanting to continue, wanting to find such artful words eventually put to a greater purpose than run-of-the-mill stories. And, in the end, disappointed that they weren't.
badcushion's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.75
All points for being well written. No points for having any story or characters worth caring about.
bellaroobookworm's review against another edition
5.0
This was beautifully done. It is at turns melancholy and hopeful, taking readers through a roller coaster of human emotions. It is one of those rare books that truly transports a reader.
theoneandonlyredrose's review against another edition
5.0
Boy can Sarah Hall write. Delicious prose with all the characters having distinct voices. Story wasn't as captivating as Haweswater but enjoyed every sentence. I've just discovered that Sarah started life as a poet - I should have guessed!
mrshoney1's review against another edition
i found it very difficult to read. it was excruciatingly confusing, but it was written well
jenrkeeling's review against another edition
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.0