Full Description
And if the world were a way out? A river? A door? And if this was not a rhetorical question?
In these peculiar times, we are thrust back into ourselves in a kind of suspension: one in which only private life exists yet threatens to become trivial through a sense of mutual, overarching dread.
Lent from award-winning writer Kate Cayley is built from this tension, exploring domestic and artistic life amidst the environmental crisis, and the surprising ways that every philosophical quandary—large and small—converges in the home, in small objects, conversations, moments.
Grotesque and tedious, baroque and banal intertwine in the first three sections. Meticulous depictions of spectacle run into the repetition of daily domestic life: trying to explain time to children, day trips to the planetarium and strangers' warnings, intersperse depictions of Mary Shelley recalling the monster, the inner life of a Seventeenth Century portrait sitter, Ted Hughes' second wife telling her story to the dead Sylvia Plath, Rusalski—souls of drowned innocents in the lake.
The final, title section, explores religious faith; how belief is itself a repetition, a slow accumulation over time, just like love or forgiveness.
Lent is an exquisite work of our era, asking us to contemplate what it means to live in a broken world—and why we still find it beautiful.
Contents
Contents:Part 1: InteriorAttentionIce SheetThe Dream of BodiesObjectsFalling Stone WallLadybug, BratislavaToy RabbitWalkingBlue HousesHauntingPart 2. Art MonstersAssia Wevill Considers Herself:1. Of Sylvia and Turning on the Gas2. She Works in Advertising3. The Sixties4. Abortion5. Tarot Cards6. She Imagines Sylvia Trying to Write7. She Reads Sylvia's Poetry8. In Which Sylvia Has a Vision of the Animals as She Turns on the GasArtDutch Masters:1. Still Life with Seashells, 16982. Still Life with Fruit in a Wan-Li Bowl, 16643. Adriana van Ijlen, 16164. Church of Saint Cecilia, Cologne, about 1670RusalkiBlue View Series (Matthew Wong 1984-2019):1. 12:30 am, 20182. Tracks in the Blue Forest, 20183. Look, the Moon, 20194. Stairway, 20195. The Waiting Room, 20196. The Old World, 2019GlassesJean GrenierMary Shelley at the End of Her Life, Recalling the MonsterThe Light in VermeerPart 3: Sixty HarvestsOf Rats and FloodsMorecambe BeachTrying to Explain Time to ChildrenThe Boys Among the TreesPlanetarium Distancing Red Foot Tortoise, Science CentreHagsSixty HarvestsA ConversationMishima and the Park BenchSemi-lockdownPart 4. LentLent
