Down Below

Leonora Carrington is perhaps the most enchanting of the women Surrealists. Theadaughter of Anglo Irish privilege, she broke free of her manor-house upbringingaand fled, first to art school, and then to the Continent. Though she is best knownaas a painter of the gothic fantastic, with a cult following and one-woman shows atamuseums around the world, her writing is no less striking. Down Belowadescribesathe events of 1940, when, after her longtime lover, artist Max Ernst was sent toaa concentration camp, Carrington was oled across the border of Knowledgeo andaimprisoned in a sanatorium for the insane. This powerful testament, reminiscent ofaCarrington's great novel The Hearing Trumpet, ranks with the work of Sylvia Plathaand Janet Frame in its raw evocation of madness.