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Notes from an Exhibition | 
| Author: Patrick Gale
Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd
Category: Book
Buy New: £14.99
New (2) Used (6) Collectible (1) from £7.27
Avg. Customer Rating:  78 reviews
Sales Rank: 222189
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0007254652
EAN: 9780007254651
ASIN: 0007254652
Publication Date: July 2, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
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| Customer Reviews: Read 73 more reviews...
 very beautiful January 3, 2009
wonderful book, i read it with no expectations but was wonderfullly surprised. took me a little time to get into it but loved every word after that.
definatley recommended.
 Disappointing and self-absorbed January 2, 2009
I had really high hopes for this book, which is probably why I thought it was disappointing.
The characters were well written, but I found the main character rather dull and self-absorbed and couldn't see how she was the centre of everyone's attention. I couldn't wait to get to the end of it so I could move onto another book!
 Over-rated, empty, fake December 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is only the second review I've written on this site. And this book made me do it! I thought it would be fascinating. However, the author really doesn't have a handle (at all) on either creativity or depression. There are no insights into creativity. And none into depression. Oh, and none on the link between the two!
In short, I was left neither feeling uplifted or intrigued by the (supposedly) brilliant creativity of the central character. Nor affected at all by her bi-polarity. In short, I was left both emotionless and having learnt nothing.
Really, I think you could gain more thoughts and emotions on creativity and/or depression by spending 10 minutes on Wikipedia (for free). And certainly if the author wrote about his own creativity, then that too would be interesting.
But this is like he's plucked a subject that he has no connection with out of the blue and been told to write an essay on it as if surveying it as a total outsider. Perhaps that's the point of it: to show the effects of it on a family which is ever having to circle a capricious ill character they don't understand. But then if the reader isn't let into understand them either... well, yes that too would work if the family was well drawn... but they are all horrible stereotypes.
Add to this, the fact that the story is disjointed and unconvincing. The only parts I think were worthwhile were the Quaker insights, the grown up child going back to live with a bereaved parent and to some extent, the character that revisits the scene of past teenage partying to find it all changed.
You know, I think the author really wanted to write about how he dealt with the tragic death of his brother in real life, as personified in one of lesser characters in this book. This was made evident right at the end. To me, his book started on the last page. Now if he wrote a book starting here, that would be something worth reading!
A fantastic read! November 28, 2008
A fantastic read! I've recommended it everyone I know, and have now starting reading the rest of Patrick Gale's books. Rough Music is also excellent.
Great once I had got into it November 25, 2008
Patrick Gale's book Notes from an exhibition centres around the life of renowned artist Rachel Kelly who suffers from Bipolar Disorder. Gale explores the effects that mental illness has on a family as a whole. The book is heavily characterised and the reader gradually discovers the consequences that Kelly's illness has had for each of her children and also her devoted husband Anthony.
Gale is particularly clever in the way he opens each chapter with an exhibition note about a piece of Kelly's work. You gradually build up a picture of the kind of art that she created and the images described become very vivid and real. The book does jump back and forth in time which I usually find quite irritating but it was really well done and allowed you to get a good account of Kelly's life as a whole.
It did take me a while to get into this book but I did enjoy it, I think that the author dealt with a really serious issue in a very sensitive but informative manner.
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