This is a short novel that didn’t really work for me. There’s some intersting and thought provoking moments about how to see things like art , life etc.

I didn't really enjoy this novel. It was quite short but ended up feeling long.

In my opinion, it was just okay. I probably wouldn't purchase this title myself but I am very grateful to Netgalley. for providing me with a DRC.

Maryann D’Agincourt, Glimpses of Gauguin, Portmay, January 2015.


Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected copy for review.

This is an elusive narrative, but one that is worth while attempting to understand. I wonder if the clue to how Maryann D’Agincourt would like her novel read is in a paragraph in the text where one of her protagonists cannot understand the meaning in Chekov’s, The Huntsman. Her father, having replaced the book Jocelyn is reading with Chekov’s, reads to her. She pictures the events rather than trying to understand them. Agincourt, in her turn, creates a myriad of pictures, including those in which her characters become a cinema audience. Gauguin’s “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going” viewed as if it is a new experience for her, is pivotal in understanding where Jocelyn will lead us. Each phrase becomes the title of a section of the book.

As Jocelyn matures and marries the pictures evoked by D’Agincourt become less elusive, more active and explanatory through marriage, an affair and a holiday in which the couple acknowledge that seeing requires more than the binoculars available to them. Again, the role of the characters as an audience is raised, although with far less artistry than in the growing to adulthood part of Jocelyn’s life. However, this is replaced by a clearer development of the characters, Joycelyn’s husband, her mother and father, and the artist, Alex Martaine, who had such an impact on Jocelyn’s early life.

Martaine becomes a symbol for Jocelyn and her parents, at the same time the practicalities of being with each other, friends and partners pursuing careers and aspirations take centre place. With a return to the early recognition and articulation of the value of perception, visual and emotional, this alluring novel is complete. I find reading D’Agincourt’s work an experience to savour. The Marriage of the Smila-Hoffmans ( Portmay Press, LLC 2022) was a particular joy. Glimpses of Gaugin does not quite fulfil this promise but has been another journey amongst lyrical language and pictures and thoughtful characterisation.

Centred around a Gauguin painting, this short novel follows Jocelyn from childhood when she first hears the name of Canadian artist Alex Martaine to middle-age, and describes the relationship she and her parents have with the elusive painter. I didn’t relate to the book at all, finding it pretentious in its style and empty in its “philosophy”. Basically, I didn’t really understand what it was trying to convey. My loss, perhaps, but this gets a big no from me.