Poor Angus

Rating:
Summary: "Can you get a divorce for playing golf?"
Review: Angus McAllister returns home to Flodday, a remote island in the Hebrides after an absence of 17 years. Angus has spent the last 17 years in the Far East--on another island--as a teacher of English, and as a painter. But now he has returned to his birthplace, bought a remote house, and decided to dedicate himself to his art. Angus experiences a feeling of relief that he's left some messy loose ends in his past far behind in Basah. He imagines that his somewhat disreputable past won't find him on Flodday. Just as Angus begins to bemoan the fact that there are no women to model for him on the island, he meets Janet, the new barmaid at the Kildonan Hotel. Janet, who possesses second sight, initially sees Angus as part of a plot she's devised to exact revenge against her philandering golf-obsessed, peacock of a husband, Duncan.

It seems that a cosy little love-nest may develop behind Angus's next canvas, but then two unwelcome women from Angus's past appear. There's coarse, earthy, redheaded Australian Nell--another of Angus's models. Nell was gorgeous in her heyday, but now after decades of drinking and smoking, she's gone to seed, and she relies on a corset to restrain the extra mounds of unwanted flesh. The second woman is Fidelia, a spectacularly beautiful married Filipino woman whose long-standing affair with Angus may cause her to lose custody of her only child.

It seems uncertain just how good a painter Angus really is. The locals treat his paintings with scorn, and apparently some of the British ex-pats in Basah use one painting for target practice, but regardless of Angus's talent or lack thereof, he uses painting as an excuse for irresponsibility. The culmination of events following Fidelia and Nell's arrival illustrate Angus's ultimate weakness and selfishness. Regarding Fidelia's anguish, the best Angus can do is say, "all I want is to be able to get on with my painting." He excuses his past involvement with women by stressing, "an artist has to use people." "Poor Angus" raises questions concerning the responsibility of an individual in a relationship, and then plays with qualifiers, such as--is an artist supposed to be less responsible than the average individual? Does talent excuse bad behaviour? And if so, how talented should one be before it's ok to use people in order to further one's art? These are questions that are put before Nell, and Janet, in particular, as they both re-evaluate their own marriages in light of Angus's behaviour. "Poor Angus" is written by Scottish novelist Robin Jenkins, and it's really is a page-turner full of fascinating characters. There's a lot of dark humour here, but ultimately, this is a very serious novel. This is the second book I've read by Jenkins, and it most certainly will not be the last--displacedhuman