Francesca Wade
Art Attack
Asunder
By Chloe Aridjis
Chatto & Windus 196pp £14.99
Every day Marie dons her uniform, takes her seat and follows her ‘calling’: she is a guard at the National Gallery, watching over the collection lest any danger should befall it. Often on her mind is her great-grandfather Ted, a guard on the day when suffragette Mary Richardson extracted a meat cleaver from her sleeve and slashed a scar across the face of Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus in protest at the imprisonment of Emmeline Pankhurst. Distractions from the monotony of observing art and people come rarely for Marie. Evenings and weekends signal the odd trip to Camden Lock with flatmate Jane, a takeaway with her friend, poet and fellow guard Daniel, or time to spend constructing her own artwork, landscapes made of eggshells and dead moths. A trip to Paris with Daniel eventually promises excitement, but the arrival of an unexpected guest thwarts Marie’s prospects of escaping lonely tedium.
The follow-up to Aridjis’s acclaimed debut, Book of Clouds (2009), Asunder is lyrical and intense. We enter the mind of Marie, who has ‘always been more interested in being than becoming’ and who suits the introspective life of a guard well. Marie’s mission is to maintain order: she must detect
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Are iPhones ruining children's lives? A prominent American psychologist thinks so.
@tiffanyjenkins is not so sure:
Tiffany Jenkins - The Smartphone Pandemic
Tiffany Jenkins: The Smartphone Pandemic - The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an...
literaryreview.co.uk
India's 'festival of democracy', or general election, begins next month. Like every good festival, it looks likely to have its fair share of murders and arrests.
@OwenBennettJon probes the state of democracy in India:
Owen Bennett-Jones - New Delhi Confidential
Owen Bennett-Jones: New Delhi Confidential - The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India by Alpa Shah
literaryreview.co.uk
Where is the world's newest narcostate and why is it thriving?
@AdamBrookesWord investigates Asia's meth mecca.
Adam Brookes - Meth Comes to Myanmar
Adam Brookes: Meth Comes to Myanmar - Narcotopia: In Search of the Asian Drug Cartel That Outwitted the CIA by Patrick Winn
literaryreview.co.uk