THE DEATH OF NOAH GLASS | GAIL JONES | 2018

This is Gail Jones’ 7^th book. I’d never heard of her until she won the Prime Minister’s prize for fiction in 2019 and I read a glowing review in The Guardian.

I really wanted to like this book. It had a lot that appealed to me: set in a couple of eras, art, and adult siblings Martin and Evie coping with grief in their own way. But it left me flat. Yes it had a pretty good story line, Noah found dead in his pool, depressed adult children, and an art heist mystery which they try to solve.

It’s touted as literary fiction (obviously the PM thinks it’s good) but for me it would need to be much more rounded. So what’s good about it, like Evie, the daughter I will make a list:

1. Some beautiful prose in the highly detailed descriptions of scenes and places.
2. Some wonderful words that made me go back and read them again.
3. A lovely understanding and obvious enjoyment of art and art history.

But it was exactly these three points that held me at a distance. Is this detached style of writing now considered cool or is that I just haven’t grasped the tenor of literary fiction?

The adult children have their own problems, Noah had a difficult childhood, a blind character that I felt was used to present scenes in images, all seemed very insular. I just didn’t care about these people. Which is a shame, I wanted to like them. But I couldn’t find common ground with any of them.

So with the title character already dead it was only the prospect of an international art heist which held any promise of a rollicking good read. Alas, it was not to be. On a cerebral level it was enjoyable but in the end I was left cold.