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Notes from an Exhibition | 
| Author: Patrick Gale
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £3.86
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Avg. Customer Rating:  75 reviews
Sales Rank: 202
Media: Paperback
Pages: 374
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0007254660
EAN: 9780007254668
ASIN: 0007254660
Publication Date: January 7, 2008
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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 70 more reviews...
 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.
A good read and will read some of his others November 24, 2008
I thoroughly enjoyed this book! A good read. Subject matter was interesting and the resulting family interactions and relationships were skillfully woven. The descriptions of Cornwall were superb and knowing the area well I was able to be vividly transported back there. A good meaty holiday read.
Shattered Lives November 19, 2008
First of Patrick Gale's novels that I've read and found it a very 'gentle' read, even though the subject matter was anything but gentle. A story of family life and family deaths and, at the centre, Rachel - the mother, forever wrestling with her own demons, for as well as being a gifted artist, she was bipolar. We learn of the effect this had on her husband's life, as well as the lives of her three children as they grew up. Time has moved on, the children are all adults and Rachel has died. Following her death, an exhibition of her pictures has been mounted, and the notes beside each work are used to commence each chapter. I liked the way the different stories from this family's life were related by each of its members, giving us a rounded view of the dynamics of that family. It's gentle in a slow-paced way, and there is a twist near the end which I hadn't expected. The author appears to have dealt with the subject of manic depression in a very down to earth, real, way and Rachel's long-suffering husband, Antony, was my quiet hero! We're left with the feeling that we know each of these characters so well, as the emotions and expectations of each one was revealed so thoroughly. I was also very interested in the input regarding Quakerism. All 'round, a really good novel.
 Multiple viewpoints don't add up to a novel October 22, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
What started out as a fairly enjoyable, if rambling, novel ended up as an excess of pointless multiple views that had me keen to finish and get it over with. I rarely give up on a novel, especially one that begins with such promise, but it was a hard slog to an end that had neither resolution nor satisfaction.
Part of the problem is due to the multiple viewpoints, a device deliberately chosen, and which sometimes works. It fails so dismally here because it destroys all suspense, leaving the reader to wade through page after page of pointless detail, knowing all the while where it's headed. Had this story been told in a more linear fashion - you know, that old chestnut of beginning, middle and end (sorry for being such a traditionalist) it would have been far more enjoyable.
The other problem is that there's way too much detail. There are whole sections crying out for an editor, for someone with a little quality control to step in and end what becomes excrutiatingly boring to read. I ploughed on because there were only fifty or so pages left and I was interested enough to want to know how it ended. How frustrating, and infuriating, it was to get to the end and find I'd been told the ending earlier in the book.
The best parts are those that deal with the two subjects of bipolarity (especially in connection with creativity) and Quakerism. So I'm not saying it's rubbish, by any means. I will not, however, be bothering with any more books by this author.
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