The Painter Of Battles

by Arturo Perez-Reverte

A man lives alone in a watchtower by the sea. On the circular walls of the tower he is painting a grand mural - the timeless landscape of a battle. He is a former war photographer, and the painting is his attempt to capture the photo he was never able to take; to encapsulate, in an instant, the meaning of war.But one day a stranger knocks on his door and announces that he has come to kill him. The man is a shadow from his past, one of the myriad faces of war, and now the consequences of his actions are brought home to him. As the novel progresses, the story of both the soldier and the artist emerge, entwined with a doomed love affair, and the progress of a painting that is infused with the history of art. Intense and turbulent this is a book about art, war, love and the human capacity for both violence and empathy. It asks very profound questions about human nature and the role of the artist, but it is also has the intensity of a psychological thriller as the painter trades stories with the man who has come to kill him - like the Knight playing chess with Death in the Seventh Seal...

• ISBN10: 0297851691
• ISBN13: 9780297851691
• Publish Date: 4 October 2007
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 29 June 2009
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
• Imprint: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 224
• Language: English

Reviews

[empressbrooke]

I was wary coming into this one after having given up on the last Pérez-Reverte book I tried. This wariness was a little uncalled for, since I had immensely enjoyed three others he wrote, but in the end it was justified. I went back and forth between being intrigued and downright bored, and quite truthfully only the slim 200-page count convinced me to see it through.

The main character, Faulques, is a former war photographer who has retired to an old tower to paint a mural of battles, an attempt at catharsis after what he had seen and lost. A soldier who he had photographed, Markovic, shows up and announces that he is going to kill him, starting off a long conversation between the two regarding the nature of man and war.

I would say it would be characteristic of me to prefer actual plot to philosophizing in a novel, but to my surprise, every time the book left the main discussion and flashed back to the photographer's past and his relationship with his lover and their travels through war-torn areas, I nearly fell asleep. The lover, Olvido, is the sort of creature that only exists in fiction, or perhaps only in the minds of men who are dreamers who conjure up untouchable women one can never really know. She is prone to the most ridiculous, romantic (in both senses of the word) dialogue that no real person would ever consider saying. The descriptions of her reminded me of an article I read about overrused elements in YA novels - "Does your character have magical green eyes? Do you keep mentioning them?" It seemed almost tragic to see it in literate fiction.

It was always with relief that I would return to the main conversation, leaving ridiculous Olvido behind. Pérez-Reverte was a war journalist himself, which adds considerable weight to the philosophizing. The conversation between Falques and Markovic is deep and uncomfortable and deserves more than two stars, but I resented Olvido's interruptions so much by the end that I can't bring myself to give it more.