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Port Mungo
by Patrick McGrath
The story of a Gauguin-like artist and his destructive relationship with a bohemian painter, as told through the eyes of his sister.
Knopf, 256 pages
06/01/2004
$24.00
ISBN: 1400041651
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Daily Telegraph David Robson
Gothic elements have been woven into a story of delicacy and not a little humour. The result is that literary rarity: a page-turner of real intelligence.
The Independent Liz Jensen
Perhaps novels this disturbing should carry a health warning. When I had finished reading Port Mungo, I felt queasy, haunted, polluted, disoriented and defiled by a work of utter brilliance.
The New York Times Book Review Christopher Benfey
At the end of this immensely clever and tautly composed novel, the admiring reader may be left with a corresponding shadow of a doubt... Well, as Eduardo might say, that's art. For what is art, finally, if not a contrivance in which one is gradually brought to believe?
The Spectator Miranda France
I knew McGrath could tell a great story, but this is the best writing of his I have read. It bodes well for the next 22 years.
The New Yorker
McGrath's latest foray into macabre psychology examines one obsessive relationship through the lens of another.
The Independent Thomas Hodgkinson
This vivid, intoxicating novel often provokes, sometimes exasperates, but never bores.
Booklist Kristine Huntley
That Gin doesn't know as much as she thinks she does will be no surprise to the reader, but watching the tragedy of the Rathbones laid bare makes for exciting reading, and although McGrath's gothic airs work better in historical settings, he succeeds in creating a convincingly twisted family here. He is a highly esteemed writer, so expect demand. [15 April 2004, p. 1405]
Boston Globe Barbara Fisher
The conjoined family myths of Jack the genius and Vera the floozy turn out to be a crock. What replaces them is a more original myth. And it is mythic in scope, including, as it does, terrifying ritual vengeance and death.
The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Catherine Bush
Port Mungo... furthers the move from [McGrath's] Gothic origins, without abandoning them altogether, to often brilliant if ultimately problematic effect.
The Guardian Alfred Hicklin
Everything McGrath produces is an expression of the anguish of being in that room alone. Whether you go into a room alone to read him depends upon how much your nerves will stand.
Daily Telegraph David Flusfeder
Yeats posed the question of whether to pursue perfection in work or in life. Auden replied that this was a false dilemma as perfection is possible in neither art nor in life. McGrath adds his voice to the debate, asking, in this skilful and entertaining novel, what if the art isn't any good?
Houston Chronicle Jim Barloon
If you read Port Mungo believing that Jack Rathbone is the protagonist, the focal point of the novel, then you're apt to be disappointed--in him as well as the novel. But if you shift your attention to his constant sister, Gin, the steadfast narrator, the novel assumes more depth and complexity.
Los Angeles Times Kai Maristed
True to its author's gothic roots, "Port Mungo" doesn't always shy from incidents stronger on shock value than credibility, and perhaps this is why the book, taken as a whole, feels less solid than the sum of its arresting parts. The most memorable pages of this engrossing novel come from a writer working forward, discarding the props and masks of genre for nuanced portraiture. [4 July 2004, R9]
Publishers Weekly
Despite McGrath's intelligent, lyrical prose, the story lacks the urgency of his earlier work.
Salon Andrew O'Hehir
If "Port Mungo" in the last analysis isn't quite the masterwork McGrath has set out to write, it's still a mesmerizing tropical tale with unforgettable characters, and an intriguing new direction for this supremely talented novelist.
San Francisco Chronicle Kim Hedges
Though "Port Mungo" does leave you curious to know what happens next, it also makes you wish you didn't have to be around for quite so much of what happened first.
Kirkus Reviews
Dark brooding over dusty secrets in what's far from McGrath's best.
Village Voice Jessica Winter
The novel stagnates in a uniquely fecund, steamy swamp; what finally float to the surface are merely the shredded illusions of a silly, lonely woman in hapless love with her brother.
Washington Post Michael Anft
The shotgun marriage of melodramatic overkill and hackneyed "artistic" behavior in Port Mungo would fail that exam. McGrath's tortured-artist tale is more of a grotesque than his usual gothic. It's a novel that gives you just what you expect from your stereotypes -- and then some.
London Review Of Books Theo Tait
In Port Mungo, there are either too many cliches or not quite enough. It is altogether less excessive and delirious than its predecessors.
 The average user rating for this book is 0.0 (out of 10) based on 0 User Votes
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