London 1967, Odelle Bastien, five years since arriving from Trinidad with her degree, leaves her job at Dolcis shoe shop to start work as a typist at the Skelton Institute of Art. It is a glorified gallery and art dealership owned by the urbane Edmund Reede and managed by the formidable Marjorie Quick.
Quick takes Odelle under her wing, and Odelle finds the older woman intriguing, bordering on mysterious. Her curiosity intensifies when a young man brings in a painting inherited from his recently deceased mother. It is a striking work depicting a glorious Andalusian landscape behind, in the foreground, a girl holding in her hand a severed head. When Quick sees the painting, she is visibly shaken.
Cut to 1936, Andalusia, in a Spain on the brink of civil war, where the Schloss family of three arrive at a rundown quinta. Harold is an exiled Austrian Jewish art dealer; his English wife, Sarah, has money and issues; their nineteen-year-old daughter Olive has a decision to make. She has an offer of a place at a prestigious art school in London but is entranced by the local landscape and light. The Schlosses are met by Isaac and Teresa Robles, young half siblings looking for casual employment. Teresa becomes housekeeper and Isaac, an aspiring artist, is commissioned by Harold to paint a portrait of his wife and daughter.
The novel toggles chunkily between the timelines, the connection between them slowly and sinuously emerges. Never obvious, never forced, just perfectly done. Each setting has a fine sense of time and place. Each character has depth and nuance. The writing is easy on the eye, yet full of both wit and grit. In each timeline pace is slowly built up to twin exciting climaxes and a resolution uncertain to the end.
It is simply an
exceedingly good read.
