Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
John Keats
I found the book very moving at times and thought it brave enough to risk epsiodes of dullness and ‘absence’ in presumable testimony to the uneven pleasures of human experience and love! The support structure to the novel seemed to work very well:Caravaggio, Rome, Keats and Gus all co-existed in a credible world where words privileged understanding almost before experience.
Yet the Jamesian influence left me feeling rather ‘adrift’ in terms of the fundamental passivity of both narrator and protagonist. But I suppose that is the point; they watch Thomas and they stare at Caravaggio and they mourn Keats….observers to the end?
The play on ‘chiascuro’ with its empahasis on light and dark areas of paintings gave the novel its ‘excuse’ I suppose for such a personally unprepossessing heroine. Elizabeth does not radiate allure and her fascination I guess must stem from the way in which she (from her shaded reality) gives us ‘Thomas’ with his irascibility, passion and sheer bloody minded intolerance. He is rendered Romantic because Elizabeth sees him in the ‘light’ of his passion for Caravaggio and for life. I did get exasperated by her passivivity and the way in which her refusal to leave her grey existence appeared lame and insubstantial; she didn’t alive enough for me.
Yet the discussion of resurrection in Caravaggio did suggest that such dead-aliveness probably affects all the characters in the novel and they are brought back to life through love.
Gus says:
‘Against yourself. You were prepared to take on yourself for her. That’s how I know.’ ( p232 Other Side of You)
Superb! How very knowing and how very real.
Characters are seeking ‘homes’ from their ‘homelessness’ inside and out and this emphasis on exile and even the very embarrassment of making do with ‘homelessness’ spiritually, emotionally and sexually is bravely done..perhaps the resurrection theme uneasily ‘near’ to us all?
Made me think ..even in the sun!