![]() The novel takes place over the weekend on which Ray has summoned his adult children, his brother and family, and an assortment of friends to celebrate the opening of his first exhibition in a decade. Having learned all this in the opening pages, the reader spends the rest of the book wanting her to take that call. Meanwhile, Ray’s wife Lucia, also an artist, is lying on her studio floor, ignoring the phone because it will be her gallerist calling with good news for her, which will upset Ray: “He tends his grudge like a sacred lamp.” Lucia has spent decades sabotaging her own career in order to be “the perfect assistant, honoured to be elected to serve the genius”. ![]() ![]() His family’s devotion makes him happy, or would if there were ever enough of it, and other people’s happiness doesn’t concern him because he doesn’t believe in other people. Partly because fiction is almost by definition uninterested in the unique – we read to learn and see patterns – the novel turns on Ray being wrong. ![]() It opens bravely with Ray Hanrahan, patriarch and painter, who lives in a large house in north London amid the chaos of “books everywhere, wizened tangerines and cold coffee”, declaring that “Tolstoy was an idiot.” “We’re famously happy, aren’t we? Aren’t we? And totally unique.” Ray believes himself unique as an artist and his wife and children unique in their devotion to him. The Exhibitionist has been longlisted for the Women’s prize. ![]()
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