THE ECLIPTIC

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The Ecliptic, Benjamin Wood, Penguin Press, 2015, 467 pp

Summary from Goodreads: On a forested island off the coast of Istanbul stands Portmantle, a gated refuge for beleaguered artists. There, a curious assembly of painters, architects, writers and musicians strive to restore their faded talents. Elspeth 'Knell' Conroy is a celebrated painter who has lost faith in her ability and fled the dizzying art scene of 1960s London. On the island, she spends her nights locked in her blacked-out studio, testing a strange new pigment for her elusive masterpiece.

But when a disaffected teenager named Fullerton arrives at the refuge, he disrupts its established routines. He is plagued by a recurring nightmare that steers him into danger, and Knell is left to pick apart the chilling mystery. Where did the boy come from, what is 'The Ecliptic', and how does it relate to their abandoned lives in England?  

My Review:

I don't know how I heard about this book. It was just published in the United States in May (Benjamin Wood is British) and as I recall, I read a review or two and instantly requested it at the library. I loved it completely.

It is about the lives of contemporary artists, a painter, a novelist, a playwright, and an architect. These four characters reside in an artist colony on a Turkish island. Becoming a resident involves a torturous path to acceptance but one requirement is that the artist must have had success and then somehow lost the muse of inspiration. 

Artists at Portmantle live there all expenses paid, though not in luxury, until they finish a new work. It is an insular existence framed by strict rules while putting no time limit on any given artist to produce something he or she feels good about sending out into the world. But when that happens, the artist must leave.

The main character, Elspeth Conroy, who also narrates the tale, is a painter. (Painters are springing up all over in the fiction I have been reading lately.) She is the only one at Portmantle who rails against the rules and when an obviously disturbed 17 year old boy arrives she finds herself compulsively drawn to him and risks much to help him.

Eventually we learn her history, a study in the uncertain life of a painter and the pressures of commercial success. As much as I was enthralled with the whole setup at Portmantle, I became even more invested in Elspeth's life story.

Then came the most outlandish twist at the end and I was in awe of the talent displayed by this fairly young author. If you or someone you know has ever toiled in the trenches of any of the arts, you will love The Ecliptic.