How to Paint a Dead Man
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Review
`Beautifully realized ... Hall's prose is raw, surprising and often quite magnificent.' --Sunday Telegraph
`Her most satisfying [novel] so far ... Hall's use of language is remarkably rich and intense.' --Observer Paperback of the Week
`A memorable novel ... Hall's brush strokes delicately add layer upon layer to her characters.' --Sunday Times
`Her most satisfying [novel] so far ... Hall's use of language is remarkably rich and intense.' --Observer Paperback of the Week
`A memorable novel ... Hall's brush strokes delicately add layer upon layer to her characters.' --Sunday Times
Review
"In this gorgeous still life of a book, Sarah Hall gives us four lives...each narrated in a different voice...Hall has a poet's gift, and this novel is best enjoyed as a prose poem whose blindingly beautiful insights gradually accrue...She has made visible to us...the ever-present shadow of eternity."--Washington Post Book World
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Some of the sentences are achingly beautiful; "Dina wore a white lace corset for our marriage, the waist of it drawn tight enough to grind pepper".
4 interrelated stories, like the four panels of a sequence of paintings. Each one a unique voice, but always referring back to art and love. One of them narrates her story in the second person, communing with her dead twin, which is hauntingly affective.
Any one of the four narrators on their own had enough lyrical language and metaphor to just lie back and bask in. The whole thing IS very much like looking at paintings in a gallery. An Impressionist still life, looking at the objects from different angles, with different plays of light on it. But the one fault of the book comes from this. You can lose yourself in the detail of colour or brushstroke, but then you eventually leave the gallery and the memory loses sharpness. I came away from this book not really changing the way I saw anything in the world. While I was in the gallery of the book, admiring the tones I really enjoyed myself. When I left I wondered what I was going to eat.
But if language is your thing and enough to keep you interested in a book, this one could well be for you.
4 interrelated stories, like the four panels of a sequence of paintings. Each one a unique voice, but always referring back to art and love. One of them narrates her story in the second person, communing with her dead twin, which is hauntingly affective.
Any one of the four narrators on their own had enough lyrical language and metaphor to just lie back and bask in. The whole thing IS very much like looking at paintings in a gallery. An Impressionist still life, looking at the objects from different angles, with different plays of light on it. But the one fault of the book comes from this. You can lose yourself in the detail of colour or brushstroke, but then you eventually leave the gallery and the memory loses sharpness. I came away from this book not really changing the way I saw anything in the world. While I was in the gallery of the book, admiring the tones I really enjoyed myself. When I left I wondered what I was going to eat.
But if language is your thing and enough to keep you interested in a book, this one could well be for you.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
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This novel was a slow starter - a series of disjointed excerpts from the lives of different people. But the more I read, the more engrossed I became.
All of the stories are interconnected, a father, his daughter, another artist he used to write to and a girl that the other artist knew.
The characters are very well written and developed, and this is what kept me reading. Although each of the characters is dealing with their own dramas, I didn't find any of the plots overly exciting, most of it was pretty mundane.
I would have given this novel more stars had it got off to a better start, or if there had been more excitement in the plot.
All of the stories are interconnected, a father, his daughter, another artist he used to write to and a girl that the other artist knew.
The characters are very well written and developed, and this is what kept me reading. Although each of the characters is dealing with their own dramas, I didn't find any of the plots overly exciting, most of it was pretty mundane.
I would have given this novel more stars had it got off to a better start, or if there had been more excitement in the plot.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
I think this is a good idea but it failed in the execution. Each chapter is related from the point of view of one of the four main characters. I was never sure whether events were taking place in the past or the present and I found the prose overwritten and literary for the sake of it.
The place of art in the lives of the four characters was of interest but again I felt it was overwritten. I could not relate at all to Susan who was trying to overcome her grief at the death of her twin brother Danny and I did not like the second person point of view. Novelists rarely use it for the good reason it is difficult to write and equally difficult to read. The Italian artist painting the same bottles over and over again did not come to life for me and the mother of the girl dealing with her blindness made me want to shake her. The girl herself was nearly convincing.
Cumbrian landscape artist Peter seemed much larger than life and not totally believable. His wife, Lydia and mother of the twins, Susan and Danny seemed like a real believable person - possibly the only one in the book. If you want to read literary fiction there are other authors who do it much better.
The place of art in the lives of the four characters was of interest but again I felt it was overwritten. I could not relate at all to Susan who was trying to overcome her grief at the death of her twin brother Danny and I did not like the second person point of view. Novelists rarely use it for the good reason it is difficult to write and equally difficult to read. The Italian artist painting the same bottles over and over again did not come to life for me and the mother of the girl dealing with her blindness made me want to shake her. The girl herself was nearly convincing.
Cumbrian landscape artist Peter seemed much larger than life and not totally believable. His wife, Lydia and mother of the twins, Susan and Danny seemed like a real believable person - possibly the only one in the book. If you want to read literary fiction there are other authors who do it much better.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not my thing
Personally for me I was disappointed with the ending as it left so much open. Yes, you can decide for yourself what happens but for me I like to know these things. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Katchew
Painterly Beauty
Four interrelated stories, connected by art. In one, Giorgio, an Italian painter of still lifes, prepares for death and muses over his past. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Kate Hopkins
Splendid
Having really enjoyed Sarah Hall's previous works but always felt that there was something missing, this was the novel that I'd wanted her to write. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Fi-li-per
A book to cherish
Achingly good - the story and characters, and the language itself, equal each other in their appeal. Always ambiguous and complex - and the more powerful for it. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Miss V Evans
Worst so far......
I've read all her other books and enjoyed them - so to has my better half who also managed to read 'How to paint a dead man' but didn't enjoy it. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Dusty Baxter
Dreadful
The other reviews have been so eloquent that I don't feel there is much more I can add. I tried this book because it was a book group choice and tried very hard to like it but it... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Sarah Kate
Great writing but...
This is beautifully written - the prose is original and well crafted and you really need to enjoy the book for that. Read more
Published on 31 Mar 2010 by Brian
A literary challenge
Sarah Hall's latest offering tells of four different stories across different times and places. The first two relate to a reclusive, old dying painter and a young blind girl, set... Read more
Published on 15 Mar 2010 by G. Horsham
Art in Art
After the tremendous success of the first novel, The Electric Michelangelo, and the John Llewellyn Rhys prize for her third, The Carhullan Army, Sarah Hall introduces How to Paint... Read more
Published on 11 Jan 2010 by Laura Mihai
Futile Attempt at Heavy Literature
I didn't much care for Sarah Hall's previous book, The Electric Michaelangelo, which suffered from much the same flaws as this - a desperate yearning for 'literary' credit and... Read more
Published on 6 Jan 2010 by Particular Press
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