Asunder

196 pages

English language

Published Dec. 18, 2013

ISBN:
978-0-544-00346-0
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OCLC Number:
852488577

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4 stars (2 reviews)

Marie's job as a guard at the National Gallery in London offers her the life she always wanted, one of invisibility and quiet contemplation. But amid the hushed corridors of the Gallery surge currents of history and violence, paintings whose power belies their own fragility. There also lingers the legacy of her great-grandfather Ted, the museum guard who slipped and fell moments before reaching the suffragette Mary Richardson as she took a blade to one of the gallery's masterpieces on the eve of the First World War. After nine years there, Marie begins to feel the tug of restlessness. A decisive change comes in the form of a winter trip to Paris, where, with the arrival of an uninvited guest and an unexpected encounter, her carefully contained world is torn open.

8 editions

Review of 'Asunder' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A woman those work, as a museum guard, appears to offer her the life she always wanted, that of invisibility and quiet contemplation, surrounded by a world of beauty and heritage. It looks as she has withdraw from the foreground, "just like those distant bluish landscapes in old paintings, so discreet you only notice them later." But after nine years, she begins to feel the tug of restlessness. It’s not just the passivity of her profession, in a way it seems that the mythological figures in the artworks, often nudes, begin to affect her psychology.

Haunting, captivating and strange.

avatar for pneumoREADS

rated it

3 stars

Subjects

  • Art museums
  • Private Police
  • Fiction

Places

  • England
  • London (England)
  • Paris
  • London
  • Paris (France)
  • France