You think portrait painting is boring? So do I. Fortunately, Jasper Gwyn finds a peculiar way of making portraits of other people: He writes them.

This is the premise of this wonderful novel - an author stops writing books and starts writing portraits instead. What does that mean? How does he do it? What do these "portraits" look like? Some of these questions get answered, and in the meantime we follow Jasper Gwyn, and a small number of other characters, as this peculiarity unfolds.

"Mr Gwyn" is a slower-paced novel, but there are things happening. It was a wonderful experience to read about the entire process - from decision to execution, and beyond. It's almost lyrical, some parts of it deal with the "literary industry" for quite a bit, and Mr Gwyn is very introspective.
What I did not appreciate: In the middle there is a section when I was unhappily wondering where it would all lead, and the continuous body-shaming of one of the characters was annoying and unnecessary.
This was alleviated by an aspect that I loved: the super short chapters. Rarely more than five pages each, they are extremely quick to read, which made the whole book feel like a (very pleasant) breeze.

I strongly recommend to read an edition of "Mr Gwyn" that also contains the novella "Three times at dawn" (see separate Goodreads entry "[b:Tre volte all'alba|13555677|Tre volte all'alba|Alessandro Baricco|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1339103218l/13555677.SY75.jpg|19126415]"). It has a connection to the novel that is revealed towards the end of "Mr Gwyn", and I would have rated the whole work one star less if I hadn't also read "Three times at dawn".
This novella really puts the cherry on top of this beautiful story, and completed the experience for me.