Vanishing: A Novel, by Gerard Woodward
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Vanishing: A Novel, by Gerard Woodward
Free Ebook PDF Vanishing: A Novel, by Gerard Woodward
From London's Soho underworld and the 1930s art scene to the battlegrounds of North Africa, a literary thriller following the exploits of an enigmatic camouflage officer―and brilliant painter―before and after World War II, by Booker Prize-nominated novelist Gerard Woodward.
Toward the end of the World War II, young British artist Kenneth Brill is arrested for painting landscapes near Heathrow Village; the authorities suspect his paintings contain coded information about the new military airfield that is being built. Brill protests that he is merely recording a landscape that will soon disappear. Under interrogation a more complicated picture emerges as Brill tells the story of his life―of growing up among the market gardens of The Heath and of his life on the London art scene of the 1930s. But a darker picture also comes to light, of dealings with the prostitutes and pimps of the Soho underworld, of a break-in at a royal residence, and of connections with well-known fascist sympathizers at home and abroad.
So who is the real Kenneth Brill? The hero of El Alamein who, as a camouflage officer, helped pull off one of the greatest acts of military deception in the history of warfare, or the lover of Italian futurist painter and fascist sympathizer Arturo Somarco? Why was he expelled from the Slade School of Fine Art? And what was he doing at Hillmead, the rural community run by Rufus Quayle, a friend of Hitler himself?
Vanishing sees the world through the eyes of one of the forgotten geniuses of modern art, a man whose artistic vision is so piercing he has trouble seeing what is right in front of him.
Vanishing: A Novel, by Gerard Woodward - Amazon Sales Rank: #1227751 in Books
- Brand: Woodward, Gerard
- Published on: 2015-05-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.30" h x 1.60" w x 6.40" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 400 pages
Vanishing: A Novel, by Gerard Woodward Review “A complicated and compelling novel about an enigmatic and eccentric artist. A portrait of an artist as a young man, with a very unreliable artist constructing the narrative. It’s an experiment in storytelling, a mystery that unfolds by impressively alternating between three time frames. It’s an amalgam of genres ― Romantic poetry, Gothic romance, and World War II adventure all inflect the writing ― stitched together by the singularity of its narrator’s voice. An ambitious, rangy and unusual novel. Something to admire.” (The New York Times Book Review)“A hard-to-put-down tale of deception. Finely written, with rich detail and vivid descriptions of people and place.” (Providence Journal)“Superb. [Woodward’s] best and most ambitious novel to date, a compulsively readable onion-peel of a book in the course of which any sane reader will gradually come to doubt every single claim Kenneth Brill makes about himself and yet will simultaneously come to feel this may be the most dauntingly honest narrator of any novel so far this year. A novel that defies reduction ― an opulent and stunningly sly performance.” (Open Letters Monthly)“Beautifully descriptive and often dark, bordering on the edges of morality, but with touches of humor.” (Historical Novel Society)“Psychologically astute. In a style similar to John Irving, poet and novelist Gerard Woodward presents a deliciously elegant, leisurely paced, and thought-provoking story that alternately has readers chuckling under their breath and weeping with pity. Reminiscent of Billy Abbott (from Irving''s In One Person, 2012) and Calliope Stephanides (from Eugenides'' Middlesex, 2002), Kenneth Brill may be a sly chameleon, but he’s a fascinating one. Puzzling and absolutely absorbing, this literary character study keeps you guessing.” (Booklist (starred review))“This is a huge, complex novel, at turns both blackly funny and bleakly moving, driven by truly original characters, rich in obscure pieces of knowledge, evocative of a long-lost, little-known past, and always absorbing - in a word, a masterpiece.” (The Daily Mail)“Rich thematic material. The book is a war novel, country novel, campus novel, coming-of-age novel, gay novel, courtroom novel, and romance novel. Woodward has a knack for sketching striking and memorable scenes.” (Minneapolis Star Tribune)“A vividly drawn tale of war, art and sexuality.” (The Independent)“A thorough novel of intrigue covering one of the shakiest times in history. Woodward plays with the novel’s language, with the novel’s structure, and makes the reader wonder what to believe. And, in the end, maybe we believe it all.” (Criminal Element)“Clever, subtle, and rewarding. An ambitious investigation into the nature of truth. Ingenious.” (Times Literary Supplement)
About the Author Gerard Woodward is the author of a number of novels, including Nourishment and an acclaimed trilogy comprising of August (shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread First Novel Award), I'll Go to Bed at Noon (shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize) and A Curious Earth. He was born in London in 1961 and published several prize-winning collections of poetry before turning to fiction. His collection of poetry, We Were Pedestrians, was shortlisted for the 2005 T. S. Eliot Prize. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. “I felt like an artist who had eaten his own still-life, though without the benefit of satiety.” By Mary Whipple In Vanishing, Gerard Woodward dramatically expands his scope and broadens his themes over his novels of the past, while narrowing his story to one main character whose life the reader follows from childhood through his arrest for espionage in the late days of World War II. Kenneth Brill, the main character, is in a military prison as the novel opens, as Davies, his interrogator from the Air Ministry, arrives to interview him in preparation for his trial for espionage. Brill has been caught painting a large number of landscapes of the farm area where he grew up, a few miles outside of London, where Brill’s family has farmed for generations. The Heath is about to become one of the biggest military air bases in Europe, and evidence from Brill’s past suggests to the Air Ministry that he may be using the paintings to send coded messages to the Nazis.Within a few more pages, Davies lets Brill know that he is completely familiar with the rest of Brill’s “record” – “arrested in London in 1937, and charged with giving false information to the police. And again in 1939 – for an act of trespass in a royal household, the Palace, no less.” Like his father, who enjoyed doing conjuring tricks, Brill is an expert at making things (and sometimes people) disappear, and Davies accuses him of having an “unstickable,” even slippery, quality, having been expelled from a series of schools as both a student and a teacher. Even in the camouflage unit, he has never been in any one place for very long. His whole life seems to have been a series of “vanishings,” through disguise, camouflage, costuming, or staged events, and Davies now wants the whole story.The “whole story” evolves through a series of complex flashbacks which may be the real story of Brill (or may not be) from his childhood to the start of his trial. By jockeying the scenes back and forth among several different places and times, Woodward keeps the suspense about Brill high while also developing themes. Several of Brill’s friends vanish for periods of time; buildings and landscapes vanish during the war; and some of Brill’s own carefully constructed self-images crumble. He “floats,” moving from place to place making no reasoned commitment on any level, an almost ghostly character who himself seems to vanish into the scenery.Woodward’s structure of flashbacks through the many different phases of Brill’s life makes this novel work. War as a series of “vanishings” gives a new slant to that well-worn subject, however horrific it may be, and a big picture emerges for the reader, even as it eludes Brill’s own grasp. His unreliability as a narrator can be both frustrating and annoying, yet he emerges as a character for whom one feels some sympathy. Woodward does incorporate some of his trademark dark humor and ironies, though these are fewer than what are found in his earlier books. Ultimately, the novel trades the intensity and surprises of his shorter novels for the broader scope of the narrative and themes here, making this novel more panoramic and more fully developed but less wildly eccentric.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. An "enigma"... By Jill Meyer Kenneth Brill, the main character in British author Gerard Woodward's new novel, "Vanishing", is not a figure readers might accept as worthy of being the subject of a novel. Brill, who begins the book as the defendant in a WW2 British army court-martial, has lived a life that looks pretty bad on paper - arrested for various offenses, both military and civilian. But those offenses seem to change in the telling of the circumstances behind them. And Kenneth Brill seems more like a Zelig-like character - one who pops up in different places in 1930's and 40's England. He was always sort of "there", but not quite as expected.Brill's family are long-time settlers in an area due west of London, called "Heath". The land of his parents and other residents is being taken over by the British government during the war, to form an airstrip. That airstrip was eventually known as "Heathrow" and is today London's main airport. Brill, an artist, is arrested for possible treasonous acts after being found drawing pictures of the soon-to-be developed area. The court martial tells the story of Brill's life up to this point.Okay, Kenneth Brill is a misunderstood figure. He's been in trouble for minor acts of vandalism, personal injury, recklessness, and going over-the-wall at Buckingham Palace to "plant German grass". He doesn't really understand his own sexuality (and neither do the readers)and the poor man goes from situation to situation. He doesn't go from "adventure to adventure"; he goes from situation to situation. This wandering through life is made possible by the people - family and friends - who in some cases cause his downfalls and in other cases help him recover. Kenneth Brill is an enigma, and I ended "Vanishing" with as little understanding of Brill and his life as when I began the book.But even if I didn't understand Kenneth Brill, I enjoyed reading about him. He was an artist - though kicked out of London's prestigious Slade School of Fine Art - and his artist's sensibility accompanied him throughout his life. We see his life - as much as we can - through that sensibility. The book's title "Vanishing" can refer to a WW2 camouflage exercise in the African desert that Brill took part in, or, I think, his Zelig-like path through life. Please read all the reviews about the book before buying it. It's not a book for everyone, but it may be your cup of tea.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Subtly Plotted Thriller Resembling a Series of Narrative Chinese Boxes By Dr. Laurence Raw Gerard Woodward's novel opens with a military court-martial in which Kenneth Brill, artist and camouflage expert, has been accused of various misdemeanors, none of which he believes are actually his fault. This situation provides the springboard for a Chinese box-like narrative veering back and forth in time, in which nothing is quite what it seems. Told largely in the first person from Brill's perspective, VANISHING looks back at his childhood days, his turbulent life in various schools, his abortive time as a student at the Slade School of Art in London, and his subsequent itinerant life as an artist until he joined up in the army.The most important aspect of the novel is to understand the implications suggested by its title. Woodward recreates a now-vanished world in and around the hamlet of Heathrow where Brill grew up. Before there was an airport there, it was mostly farm-land, fertilized by heaps of dung. Families lived there for generations - sometimes feuding with one another, but learning in the end how to co-exist peacefully. Yet this apparently timeless world is abruptly curtailed by a government edict during the Second World War in which all the land was commandeered to make way for an airport. This draconian decision makes us aware of the mutability of all things: nothing lasts for ever.The same also applies to Brill's artistic productions. Artists' canvasses record things - impressions, environments, people - for all time, as their work is exhibited in art galleries for future generations to enjoy. In Brill's case, however, many of his canvasses are either concealed, destroyed, or misunderstood. No one, it seems, can recognize his talents - least of all Brill himself. His work, as well as his abilities, simply vanish into thin air.Gerard Woodward vividly recreates a world riddled with hypocrisies, where morality was apparently strict (in its denunciation of homosexuality as something evil) yet people tolerated most nefarious activities, so long as they were kept out of the public eye. Men like Brill not only remain uncertain about their sexuality, but can never distinguish between their friends and their enemies. Those whom they trust the most turn out to be working against the national interest. Living in such a random universe, we wonder whether or not that Brill himself is a victim of a vanished morality; a society that claims to adhere to Victorian values yet understands not a shred of what such values truly are.Reading the novel is a disconcerting experience, as our expectations as to what will happen next are continually frustrated. It is up to us to piece its various temporal strands together and understand what they tell us about Brill's past, present, and future. We are in sense victims of another vanished convention; that of the reliable narrator. VANISHING demands close attention but proves rewarding all the same.
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