The Sensualist: An Illustrated Novel

Rating:
Summary: Strangely involving, unnecesarily weird
Review: After the first 50 pages, the books suddenly draws you in. Helen is in search of her husband, so she can put an end to a dead marriage. Following his steps, she becomes teh center of a strange mystery, sought after by weird characters whose interst in her is never quite explained.

The novel is a page-turner. The descriptions of European cities is detailed and alive. However, a lot of circumstances remain unclear. The reader is left with a lot of whys and how comes. Yet, that said, the novel is so unique that is worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: Helen through the Looking Glass
Review: An anatomical artist, Helen Martin, goes to Europe to find her missing husband and meets an assortment of strange and, perhaps, supernatural characters. This is fantastic, whimsical light fiction; if whimsy is not your thing, you may feel like you've been sucked into a bad episode of "Twin Peaks"; however I enjoyed Helen's quest quite a bit. The ending of this story is more conclusive than the ending of Hodgson's last fiction, The Tattooed Map. The Sensualist is comparable to Nick Bantock's The Venetian's Wife, although I think the Bantock book is a little better. Warning: If you're a fan of toy and movable books you should know that although The Sensualist has several beautifully rendered drawings and fold-outs (I loved the fold-out brain drawing on page 122), there aren't as many pictures in this as in The Tattooed Map. The Sensualist is more of a full-sized novel (295 pages) than the slim The Tattooed Map.

Rating:
Summary: Helen through the Looking Glass
Review: Helen Martin, an anatomical artist, goes to Europe to search for her missing estranged husband. Along the way she gets sidetracked by some odd and perhaps supernatural characters who have their own plans for her. Like Lewis Carroll's Alice, this is light, whimsical fiction; however, if whimsy is not your thing, you may feel like you're trapped in a bad episode of "Twin Peaks." I personally enjoyed it quite a bit. The ending of this story is more conclusive than Hodgson's last book, The Tattooed Map. Warning to fans of Toy and Movable Books: Although The Sensualist does have several illustrations and fold-outs (I liked the fold-out brain on page 122) this is more of a full-sized novel (295 pages) than the slim The Tattooed Map.

Rating:
Summary: Bizarre.
Review: Hodgson certainly doesn't beat around the bush, establishing the eerie mood of this unique novel with her opening sentence: "Helen woke up in the middle of the night wearing someone else's breasts." If that doesn't catch your attention, Helen's encounters on the train from Munich to Vienna should. A grotesque female doctor gives Helen an antique wooden box filled with medical memorabilia for her "search"; an old woman, accompanied by a young man wearing eye makeup, demands in vain that Helen change her seat, then leaves her a diamond ring; and a talking dog offers her a new pair of shoes, while his mistress plops herself down and begins to shave her legs.

A combination of a fever dream and a nightmare, this strikingly illustrated novel explores the five senses and the anatomy associated with them, as Helen, a specialist in anatomical illustration, searches for her missing husband and expands her vision of life's possibilities. Martin, her husband, is a journalist who has been investigating art fraud in Europe, specifically fraud involving the woodblocks used to reproduce the anatomical studies of Vesalius in 1543. Helen's mysterious wooden box includes a Vesalius woodcut, which may provide a key to unraveling Martin's disappearance, but the contents of the box are always changing, as virtually everyone Helen meets either adds or subtracts objects. A series of new mysteries emerge, involving horrible murders and suicides among the people Helen has met.

While the book is certainly intriguing in many ways, Hodgson pushes the envelope so far that I wondered if she were deliberately trying to out-weird all other contemporary authors with her plot. The "willing suspension of disbelief" ended early for me. Unlike some other readers, I did not find the book "light," or "whimsical." Rather, I found it dark and gloomy, filled with depressing visions of raw humanity. The illustrations, which are beautifully produced and amazingly clever in their fold-outs, are, nevertheless, anatomical drawings and woodcuts, so esoteric an aspect of "art history," that I found it difficult to see why the Helen (and the author) found them so intrinsically interesting. This is an amazing book--but I didn't find it a very pleasant one.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the money
Review: I found this book to be schizophrenic at best. Not well written and an absolutely non-sensical storyline. The plot was rather dumb and dull, and I found myself not caring one whit about the main character in the book. I'm wondering if Ms Hodgson was perhaps a bit delusional herself when putting this book together.

I DO like well-done fantasies and mysteries...unfortunately, this was neither.

Rating:
Summary: This book will make a good paperweight
Review: I saw this book without the benefit of a review. I am drawn to typography and graphic design and this book looks well-designed so I bought it. I even enjoy the foldouts.

But, of course, as expected the novelty of the design wore out and I decided to read it - after all, isn't that exactly what we do with books? Read them?

First chapter I am already trying to control my gag response. Two chapters more and my suspicion is verified - this is a terribly written book. Terrible in the sense that it is so self-indulgent. The fantastic element starts becoming so contrived and has called attention to itself. In time, the plot wobbles shamelessly. All the author's efforts in trying to prevent the story from coming out wickedly boring and the sentences from sounding badly written fail not with a bang but a whimper. Her sentences could no longer afford to support its own ponderous weight. The center wouldn't hold. The maelstrom of mediocre writing is collapsing upon itself until you wish to drink hemlock or smoke some weed to alleviate your suffering.

There is too much suffering in the world already and I will not take it from a failed novelist whose main claim to fame is her talent for parading her impoverished imagination and a talent for expressing it so that you are put to sleep.

Enough. Now to get my money's worth I have started cutting up the foldouts from the book and make a decoupage out of them.

Rating:
Summary: An Anatomy Lesson
Review: The Sensualist is a very beautiful book. The illustrations are both exacting and balanced but the textual representations of the body try to mimic the pictorial and this is where the book begins to falter. The plot is rather haphazard but I didn't mind this - after all, it's a mystery.

Helen Martin is searching for her husband but instead finds anatomical drawings. The focus of the novel immediately switches from the huband to the drawings, relating their history and perhaps more about the history of all anatomical illustration than the readre would care to learn. When the lesson gives way to narrative once again the writing becomes centered on the physical and tactile sensations of Helen Martin. This would be a fantastic cinematic effect but somehow just doesn't work in the novel...

By the middle of the book I was reading quickly, not even looking at the drawings, just wanting to reach the resolution of the mystery and learn the outcome of Helen's search for her husband. In the end I was pretty disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: An Anatomy Lesson
Review: The Sensualist is a very beautiful book. The illustrations are both exacting and balanced but the textual representations of the body try to mimic the pictorial and this is where the book begins to falter. The plot is rather haphazard but I didn't mind this - after all, it's a mystery.

Helen Martin is searching for her husband but instead finds anatomical drawings. The focus of the novel immediately switches from the huband to the drawings, relating their history and perhaps more about the history of all anatomical illustration than the readre would care to learn. When the lesson gives way to narrative once again the writing becomes centered on the physical and tactile sensations of Helen Martin. This would be a fantastic cinematic effect but somehow just doesn't work in the novel...

By the middle of the book I was reading quickly, not even looking at the drawings, just wanting to reach the resolution of the mystery and learn the outcome of Helen's search for her husband. In the end I was pretty disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Helen as Alice in Wonderland
Review: This book defies conventionality and is unlike anything that I have read except "Alice in Wonderland". That makes it difficult to review. Helen is on a journey not only to find herself, but find her missing husband. The cast of characters that she encounters are not only entertaining, but pieces to the puzzle of a murder. I found myself bored at times and intensely interested at others. I enjoyed the ways in which this book was different, including the drawings and lithographs that were on every 10 pages or so. This is definitely a different type of read, and for that alone I liked it.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This book is so strange it will drive you crazy, in a good way. I really enjoyed it and couldn't put it down. The illustrations added a lot to it as well. Try it!