"The novel spares no details in its depiction of the human cost of gentrification and the brutal realities of life on the margins, but it is also a deeply affecting, compelling celebration of community, and the power of collective action and defiance. "
Another isolated, heavily wooded enclave located far outside the comfort zone of modern metropolitan life, is also the setting for The Painter’s Friend, Howard Cunnell’s uncompromising but bleakly beautiful fable of hardscrabble lives spent beyond the pale.
The novel’s protagonist Terry Godden, a once fêted, almost -famous artist, prone to self-destruction, finds refuge from his former life on a an island set in the middle of an unnamed but uncannily familiar river, that is home to raggle-taggle community of outcasts, misfits and battered and shopsoiled survivors.
The island is owned by the cynical, cutthroat businessman and art collector Alex Kaplan, whose whims, wheelings and dealings and manipulation of the market can make or break the reputation and livelihood of any aspiring artist. Seeking to maximise his investments, Kaplan announces his intention to enforce a punitive rent increase and evict squatters from the island, thus setting the stage for a brutal confrontation which culminates in an exhilarating and explosive act of resistance.
The novel spares no details in its depiction of the human cost of gentrification and the brutal realities of life on the margins, but it is also a deeply affecting, compelling celebration of community, and the power of collective action and defiance.
Whilst The Painter’s Friend shares many qualities with many of the greatest, grittiest chronicles of English working class life and struggle from Robert Tressell’s The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, to John Healey’s The Grass Arena and the novels of Barry Hines or David Storey, it also possesses something of the hallucinatory power of a Joseph Conrad fever dream or a parable by Kafka or Cormac McCarthy. That the author manages to pull off this incredibly difficult balancing act with immense skill and without sacrificing readability is a huge achievement.
The painter Terry Godden was on the brink of his first success. After a violent crisis, he finds himself outcast.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Other Genres: |
The painter Terry Godden was on the brink of his first success. After a violent crisis, he finds himself outcast.
The Painter's Friend features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Political / Legal Thrillers, Narrative theme: Sense of place, Environmentalist, conservationist and Green organizations, Corruption in politics, government and society, General Fiction, Fiction, Thriller and Suspense, Fiction: narrative themes, The environment, Earth Sciences, Geography, Environment, Planning, Politics and government, Society and Social Sciences
Paperback. £8.99, down from the £9.99 cover price. In Stock.
The Painter's Friend was written by Howard Cunnell and published by Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan
The Painter's Friend has 288 pages
£8.99, reduced from £9.99. In Stock.
