Jeremy Vine’s is not a name I had, until now, associated with novels. Neither had the surprised friend who drew my attention to The Diver and the Lover (2020). She didn’t offer any kind of verdict – just said she’d be interested to know what I thought of it. So here goes.
Salvador Dali’s famous, startling 1951 crucifixion painting, Christ of Saint John of the Cross hangs in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery amd Museum in Glasgow. American stuntman Russell Saunders modelled for it, suspended from a gantry. The painting was bought from the artist by Dr Tom Honeyman for Glasgow for £8,200.
That is Vine’s starting point for a rather arresting historical novel full of time shifts. It’s a novel inspired by art ( a sub genre?) like Tracey Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring or Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy although Vine’s is a quite different approach from either of those.
Two (fictional) half-sisters, a fifteen year age gap between them are at Port Lligat in Spain where Dali is living. It is 1951. The elder, Meredith, has mental health issues, because of a tragically traumatised childhood, and you soon begin to wonder if she is involved in Vine’s framing device. The novel starts at Kelvingrove in the present where a gallery employee sees an elderly woman apparently trying to damage the painting and it ends with the outcome of that incident.
Back in 1951 Meredith, who loves art, wants to meet Dali. In their hotel is an attractive young man named Adam Bannerman whose build is similar to Russell Saunders – who is also around. Bannerman is a diver and the younger sister Ginny sees him dive naked off the cliffs one morning and it’s the beginning of something for them both although Vine keeps us wondering for a long time.
Eventually – it’s a bit drawn out – they do get into the house where Dali works and lives with Gala, who seems to be a wife cum housekeeper cum protective PA cum (probably) cover for his gay proclivities. The point is, eventually, which of the two men actually modelled for the painting? And there’s fraught political tension beneath everything that goes on because this is Franco’s Spain in which people the regime don’t like are summarily despatched by armed police. Vine builds in a lot of suspense, particularly when Bannerman is left alone in great danger in Dali’s deserted villa.
Vine is rather good at evoking the climate and ambience of Port Lligat and the descriptions of Dali’s surreal, eccentric home (swimming pool shaped like phallus and testicles) are fun and, presumably researched. It’s also an ingenious plot which made me call up images of the painting several times. And thank you, Jeremy Vine, for a satisfying ending. They’re too rare.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Boundless Deep by Richard Holmes
