Tuesday 31 May 2022

“Burntcoat” by Sarah Hall - review


“Burntcoat” by Sarah Hall:

This is not your run-of-the-mill dystopian pandemic novel although there is a virus and all and everything is breaking apart. The narrator in this minimalistic epic is Edith, a sculptor of monumental, award-winning wooden sculptures and her story is by far not easy to digest but revelatory in its cruelty. Themes of art, sex, violence and difficult relationships play against a background of disaster in the form of a deadly pandemic. 


Edith lives and works in Burntcoat, a former vast warehouse which she transformed into a combination of home and studio space. Her narrative moves between the north of England and Japan where she once learnt the traditional woodwork burning techniques she employs in her art. But the narrative also travels back and forth in time, from her childhood (she was raised by a single mother who was disabled by a brain haemorrhage) to her art-school years and present artistic fame. 


In Burntcoat she begins a love affair with Halit, an immigrant chef. Lockdown comes, society collapses and Halit moves in with her. One day he goes out to get food from his former restaurant and comes home bleeding. In relentless prose we are forced to watch as a few days later he develops lesions and his illness and rapid decline begins. From this moment on we see the dissolution of the self by disease, we feel the dehumanizing, transformative power of the virus, so much more vicious than the one we had to endure during the last two years, and it affects everything dear to us: security, love, sexuality and creativity. We suddenly realize that we, that the whole world, had been spared a much more cruel fate and we suddenly see Life for what it always was: ephemeral. 


This is as much a tale of love as of death, of anguish and hurt, of loss and hope. As the wood which Edith burnishes in her art she became burnt, damaged but also more resilient.


 “A life is a bead of water on the  black surface, so frail, so strong.“



#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry

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