Notes From an Exhibition

Author(s): Patrick Gale

Location(s): Cornwall

Genre(s): Fiction

Location

Content

With a lightness of touch, Patrick Gale delves into the link between creativity and mental health – the essential themes of art, death and bi-polar disorder.

When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies she leaves behind an extraordinary body of work – but for her family there is a legacy of secrets and painful revelations.

Rachel exerts a power that outlives her. To her children she is both curse and blessing, as they cope with the inheritance of her passions – and demons. Only their father’s gift of stillness can withstand Rachel’s destructive influence and the suspicion that they all came a poor second to her art.

Piecing together the clues of her life – as artist, lover, mother, wife and patient – takes the reader from Cornwall to Canada across a span of forty years. What emerges is a tender story of enduring love, and a portrait of a family coping with the sometimes too dazzling brilliance of a genius.

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