The Museum Guard : A Novel

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Summary: A Quirky Novel About Art and the Loss of Innocence
Review: "The Museum Guard" is a wonderful, original novel, related by a museum guard who reminds one of J. D. Salinger's young narrators. The shenanigans gotten up to by the narrator and his uncle, his colleague in a small museum in Halifax, and a co-resident of the Lord Nelson Hotel, are marvelous. But, the year is 1938, and it would seem that a certain painting that is currently on view in the museum, "Sunday Flower Market-- Amsterdam--" is an allegory for the impending war in Europe. A curly haired young boy sits in a cart pulled by a goat while his proud parents, dressed in their Sunday finest, look on. But under the goat is a hideous dwarf (Hitler?) who is about to stab the goat with a knife. And the narrator's girlfriend has become obsessed with yet another painting, "Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam." Through various plot machinations events in Amsterdam move disconcertingly close to Halifax. Innocence is lost. A fine read that poses many questions.

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Summary: A Rather "Novel" Novel
Review: In late 1930's Nova Scotia, a young man named Defoe Russet works as a muesum guard in Halifax , has difficult relationships with his wayward Uncle that raised him(who also works there)and as well as a Jewish girlfriend, Imogen( a care-taker at the small Jewish cemetary nearby).The book seems to be about that until The author weaves into an interesting tale centering around a Dutch painting that arrives at the tiny Glace Museum and how it affects Imogen,who can only be properly described as rather neurotic,as she(too) closely identifies with the painting titled "Jewess On A Street In Amsterdam" As a result, she makes a strange,life-threatening decision to actually become the woman in the painting,first by dressing like her,then making a very risky voyage to Amsterdam to live as the "Jewess" in the painting. The terrible news from overseas being dictated urgently by a popular radio personality only makes her more unbalanced and eager to assume this new life. Though a bit pedantic at times,this is an intriguing,and overall unsettling,tale,with flashes of dry humor. A unique book that will make you think.

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Summary: Between Hotel and Cemetery
Review: One of the disarming things about this somewhat old-fashioned, charming novel is the gradual realization that most of the tight-knit group of characters have taken up permanent residence in hotels (the main character DeFoe Russet, his cantankerous uncle, his uncle's various paramours, and the artist Heijman); if they do not live in hotels, they tend public buildings such as the museum of the title or the Jewish cemetery of which DeFoe's long-term lover is caretaker. There is nevertheless a feeling that these settings are incidental to the central character's quest, much like the hotel in Ishiguru's mammoth and brilliant The Unconsoled. As a result, Norman avoids the obvious pitfalls of writing about paintings and artists in too much depth at the expense of characterization and story. Even more surprising is that the ostensible focus of the whole story, a modern Dutch painting, Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam, and a series of paintings by the same artist, never becomes hackneyed. Norman prefers to play safe and concerns himself with one character's obsession, a la Vertigo, with the subject of the above-mentioned painting which comes to a museum in the port city of Halifax, Canada, in 1938 and deals with the effects it has on the DeFoe, the narrator. There is no danger of his being too academic ('I am not a thinker here, only a describer', he says at one point). This reviewer would have preferred more detail about the painter, his painting and the tradition of Dutch art the work relates to. But you get plenty of that kind of thing in John Banville, who has already championed this novel. There is, however, one tantalizing idea and opportunity passed up in the layout of the book. In the Picador edition the various chapter titles are literally framed in borders of differing ratios. It would have been an excellent idea to have had these frames actually relate to the paintings mentioned in the text, but they don't, as far as I can see, and they are not consistent. The same can be said of the annoying front cover illustration where we see the heroine Imogen looking at the Jewess in the museum, but the painting she is looking at is totally contradicted by the few descriptions of this painting we get in the text. These are small caveats, because what Norman delivers first and foremost is a riveting story about passions which are constantly deferred from one object or person to another. DeFoe is in love with Imogen, who is obsessed with taking on the identity of a figure in a painting which she rightly assumes is the deceased wife of the artist. DeFoe's uncle, a womaniser and seeming rogue, is more passionate about the roving political commentator Ovid Lamartine, who he gives up his life trying to save, than in his mistresses, one of whom is Imogen. The curator of the museum, in love with Miss Delbo, the museum guide, risks his life and probably his reputation chaperoning Imogen to Amsterdam when the Nazis are on the doorstep of the city.
Norman's style is straightforward, almost conversational, with moments of light relief that play on occasional oddnesses in the two central characters' perceptions of things. One moment to savour is DeFoe's slightly manic hatred of one particular painting in the permanent collection, Sunday Flower Market by Peter Lely. 'After five minutes or so of looking at Sunday Flower Market', DeFoe explains, 'my opinion was: Get me out of here', and he goes on to give a longish description of the picture which features a menacing dwarf with a knife about to slit open the stomach of a goat. 'That dwarf really got to me', he adds for good measure. DeFoe's uncle provides moments of quirky humour too, at one point arguing in front of a tour party with Miss Delbo that the bread held by the Jewess is stale. On another occasion, DeFoe reports, his 'uncle was sitting on the corner chair. When he saw me, he produced a dunce cap he had fashioned from [a] newspaper. He fitted it over his head. It was too small. He pinched his mouth into a pout, then slapped his own wrist. My uncle could make me laugh'. Imogen displays this quirkiness when in a discussion initiated by their discovery that Miss Delbo and Edgar Connaught, the museum curator, are lovers. To DeFoe's '"They only have the briefest conversations in the museum. A few sentences at most"', Imogen replies baldly, '"'See you tonight at seven' is one sentence, DeFoe"'.
In an interesting symmetry at the end everyone is replaced or replaces someone else. DeFoe steals the painting for Imogen (strongly echoing Banville's The Book of Evidence) and ends up in another public institution - prison - for a short time, while Imogen succeeds temporarily at least in replacing Heijman's wife as his new model (incidentally driving the artist mad in the process). Heijman in turn redoes a series of paintings of his first wife, which the curator takes back to Canada. The museum curator himself is temporarily replaced while he is away, and DeFoe's job goes to the brother of a policeman he initially approached after an incident where he suspected his uncle of stealing The Jewess. We cannot be sure what happens to Imogen in the end, but there is a good chance that she is tending a cemetery in Amsterdam or even in Germany, whereas DeFoe is back at the hotel.