The Cemetery in Barnes
Gabriel Josipovici's The Cemetery in Barnes is a short, intense novel that opens in elegiac mode, advances quietly towards something dark and disturbing, before ending with an eerie calm. Its three plots, relationships and time-scales are tightly woven into a single story; three voices--as in an opera by Monteverdi--provide the soundtrack, enhanced by a chorus of friends and acquaintances. The main voice is that of a translator who moves from London to Paris and then to Wales, the setting for an unexpected conflagration. The ending at once confirms and suspends the reader's darkest intuitions. "The Cemetery in Barnes reaffirms Josipovici's status as 'one of the very best writers now at work in the English language, and a man whose writing, both in fiction and in critical studies, displays a unity of sensibility and intelligence and deep feeling difficult to overvalue at any time.'" --Guardian
Reviews
Gary Homewood@GaryHomewood
Aging translator narrator in Paris, a creature of habit (he insistently remind us) slowly revealing other stories of his life in London, a house in Wales and his 2 marriages. It might not seem important, but I love the level of detail in his descriptions of London (Putney) because I know they're accurate. Really subtle, seems straightforward then artfully becomes three interlinked narratives that become confused and ambiguous. Some clever erudite stuff about translation of poetry, tiny glimpses of existential angst or something. Graveyards, culture, translation, alternative lives. The narrator becomes unreliable. It ends perfectly. Art house noir.
Lina.@murmuration
Hellboy TCR@hellboytcr009