Author Daniel Silva plays a game with the reader here, unlike anything I have noticed in his past novels. Here, art restorer Gabriel Allon changes from the Allon we have known in the past, becoming quite a different person. Instead of maintaining his honesty and sense of honor, in which he has always prided himself, he joins the large group of art fraudsters and their financiers throughout the western world and begins to create fraudulent “masterpieces” by the “greatest painters” of the western world. He becomes almost totally dissociated from his wife and children in Venice and leads a separate life of crime, surrounded by some of his own fraudulent “masterpieces” which appear throughout Europe and New York. He is so effective at creating these that he can produce one new “old masterpiece” painting every three or four days – each one so “authentic,” even in the craquelure – the little cracks in the paint and varnish which ancient paintings have – that no one can tell that they are newly created. The extent of the unregulated art fraud business comes into full play here, as Allon works among the crooks.
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I readily admit that I have found Patrick Modiano to be the most fascinating author I have ever experienced, and I have read most, if not all, of his books in print in English. His unique upbringing in post-war France, essentially without parents or real stand-ins for them, his search for his identity through his writing, and his honesty as he approaches life make each book, which he calls a novel here, a unique experience for the reader as much as it must have been for the author. By the time I finished reading, I felt as if I had actually lived through the life of the narrator in a way I have never experienced before – feeling his feelings, recognizing his surprises with him, and puzzling with him when some of the events and characters appear with little to no connection or context. As the novel opens, the main character, Jean Eyben, is twenty years old and he has just received a case file regarding Noelle Lefebvre, a young woman who is missing. Jean is working for the Hutte Detective Agency, and his “case file” consists of “a single sheet in a sky blue folder that has faded with time…turned almost white.” In episodes back and forth over the next thirty years, Eyben searches for this woman and the people who may have known her.
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I have enjoyed several of Kevin Barry’s novels, along with Dark Lies the Island, an earlier collection of his short stories. Nothing I have read in the past, however, compares to the dark thrills and surprises packed into this latest collection of stories. The west of Ireland, described by the locals themselves as a “cause of death” in and of itself, is the setting for the stories here, all concerned with romantic themes including love, identity, insecurity, and sometimes resignation. Both heartfelt and ironic, even comic, at times, Barry’s stories create a lively picture of the characters even when those characters are sometimes broken by their own uncertainties. Though some find a measure of happiness, even temporarily, most never find the “ever after,” at least not without recognizing the need for change. ”
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In ten short stories, Irish author Roddy Doyle sums up the new, difficult lives of several men dealing alone with various issues, including the difficulty of dealing with health-required lockdowns in the wake of Covid 19. In Ireland, these lockdowns seem to have been accepted as a matter of course, something affecting everyone and obeyed by everyone, though creating a strong sense of melancholy and loss to everyday life. Roddy Doyle’s book title, “Life Without Children,” also reflects the emptiness many of his characters feel with their children now grown up and missing from their parents’ everyday lives, to the point where at least one character, in the short story “Life Without Children,” wonders if it is even possible to change his now-dull life for the better. The “action” of these stories is quiet and personal for all the main characters, each of whom spends much of his time analyzing his situation, his relationships, and himself. This is a collection which will keep older readers thoroughly involved and intrigued by the author’s solutions to his characters’ darker moments “without children,” while younger readers will be intrigued by Doyle’s insights and his depictions of a different reality.
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Setting his third novel in the south of Ireland in the years between 1920 and 1982, author Billy O’Callaghan writes a semi-autobiographical account of a large, extended Irish family always struggling to stay alive, meet their responsibilities, and love their children. O’Callaghan, a master of description, both physical and emotional, creates scenes of great sadness, stressing the goodness of the people and the horrors of outside events – from the Potato Famine through a world war and a society and church in which women have little control over their lives. The strength of these women lies in their love of family, especially their children, and their willingness to do whatever is necessary to save them under horrific conditions. Their hard lives are their “normal,” one which becomes real as a result of O’Callaghan’s insightful descriptions of the conditions under which these women live and the creativity with which they approach their difficult roles as mothers and caregivers.
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