The Portrait

Table of Contents

 

 

PRAISE FOR
The Portrait

“The appeal of [
The Portrait
] lies in the intensity of its narrator’s growing sense of injustice as he recounts all the indignities that he has suffered over the years from a cruel critic whom he once considered a friend. He wants revenge now, but he wants it to come slowly.”
—The Boston Globe

 

“A smart little psychological thriller . . . The film version—and there ought to be one—might feature Anthony Hopkins riffing off his Hannibal Lecter role while channeling the spirit of Kathy Bates’s crazed fan in
Misery
.”
—The New York Times

 

“Mesmerizing . . . This is a novel of pitiless revenge.”

 

“By the end of the novel, the boundaries between art and life are crossed in ways that are weirdly haunting.”

 

“A fascinating work of high-minded literature written on a small canvas.”
—Houston Chronicle

 

“A true tour de force . . . initially engaging and finally utterly chilling . . . an extraordinary work.”

—Library Journal
(starred review)

 

“Pears, gracefully but mercilessly scraping layers of personalities away with a finely honed scalpel, plumbs the depths of [a] disturbing dynamic and raises all kinds of unsettling but necessary questions.”
—The Providence Journal

“Much like Robert Browning in his classic dramatic monologues, Pears presents a classic unreliable narrator, although the degree of his unreliability is left tantalizingly ambiguous. . . . For those who prefer the subtlety of a small canvas, where the perfidy of the human heart is revealed in shadow, Pears’s ‘portrait’ is an exquisite little gem.”

—Booklist
(starred review)

 

“Like the most potent works of art,
The Portrait
contains multitudes within its slender frame . . . the prose is as direct as a brushstroke. And when a sinister tone enters [the] narration, one can sense the raw, emotional impact that gathers like a violent storm. Richly evocative of its historical milieu,
The Portrait
is a study in presentation and rising drama that rewards multiple viewings. And readings.”
—BookPage

 

 

PRAISE FOR
The Dream of Scipio
An ALA
Booklist
Editors’ Choice

 

“Braiding together parallel plots of romance and political intrigue set in Provence during three dark eras,
The Dream of Scipio
is a murder mystery on the grandest scale. . . . [Pears] invests his complex story with piquancy, irony, and humor. There is much to ponder here, from Neoplatonic philosophy to anti-Semitism to public duty. . . . Eye-opening.”
—People

 

“Pears builds a multilayered tale of moral choice, love, danger, and loss. Like an archaeologist, he uncovers worlds beneath worlds in a few square miles of Provençal earth.”

“
The Dream of Scipio
is not a mystery story. But it is a mysterious book, plumbing the shifting motives and passions of its perplexed characters and tracking the startling trajectories of ideas over the course of centuries. . . . Pears weaves back and forth, making it easier for the reader to grasp their parallels, contrasts, and ironies. His novel is roughly in the tradition of Umberto Eco’s
The Name of the Rose
, but it has more passion and urgency than Mr. Eco’s lighter, more playful work.
The Dream of Scipio
is complex, surprising, and thought-provoking, a dream of a novel in more senses than one.”

 

“Pears could not have chosen a setting richer in beauty or in historical resonance. . . .
The Dream of Scipio
is an adventure and an achievement to match
An Instance of the Fingerpost
.”

 

“A dazzling triptych of love and ideas . . . Pears leaves us with a dream, not only of destruction, but of immense and unexpected heroism. Pears’s finest book yet, even more successful and riveting than its predecessor . . . immensely readable, fast-moving, and full of wonderful juxtaposition.”

 

“Lucid and informative . . . audacious and sophisticated.”

 

“Erudite and highly readable . . . [Pears’s] fans will rejoice in
The Dream of Scipio
.”
—USA Today

“An entirely satisfying symphony of story and substance . . . ingeniously imagined. Imagine a ropemaker, turning and twisting three fibers to make one immensely strong strand. Or perhaps a hairdresser, weaving three hanks of hair into an intricate and beautiful plait. Such is the ambitious structure of Iain Pears’s new novel . . . a book that begins as an admirable intellectual accomplishment, and becomes, in the end, a thrilling journey through history, into the human heart and soul.”
—The Washington Post

 

“Iain Pears is everybody’s fantasy of the ultimate history teacher. . . . His popular mysteries, so intricately woven from the threads of the past, have given the genre more class and intellectual depth than it’s ever had. . . . This is another wildly entertaining novel. . . . Pears has constructed a kind of literary Rubik’s Cube, spinning these stories through each other in short chapters that produce fascinating patterns and parallels. . . . One of the dazzling pleasures of this novel is Pears’s ability to follow the bumblebee flight of an idea through the ravages of time . . . remarkable. . . . This is a novel for our time about all time. Those who ignore Iain Pears are doomed to repeat the past.”

 

“[An] ambitious, heartfelt, and thought-provoking book, one that should find a home in the heart of every thinking reader.”

 

“A dazzling hall of mirrors . . . a remarkable read, compulsive not only as a historical novel, but also as a genuine novel of ideas.”

—The Daily Telegraph
(London)

“Iain Pears is a special kind of risk taker—a philosophical mystery writer with an uncommon talent for popularizing the obscure and arcane, and telling a hell of a story while doing it. . . . People who thought Pears could not top
Fingerpost
are going to be surprised. He did.”
—New York Daily News

 

 

PRAISE FOR
An Instance of the Fingerpost
A
New York Times
Bestseller
A
New York Times
Notable Book
Named One of the New York Public Library’s
Books to Remember of 1998

“May well be the best historical mystery ever written.”

 

“If you liked Umberto Eco’s
The Name of the Rose
, you should run to buy Iain Pears’s lavishly erudite historical mystery.”

 

“Utterly mesmerizing . . . Iain Pears has written an impressively original and audaciously imaginative intellectual thriller. . . . Don’t miss it.”
—The Washington Post Book World

 

“Fascinating . . . quite extraordinary . . . elevates the murder mystery to the category of hight art.”

“Enthralling . . . a gripping, expert, and wholly plausible journey to a singularly fascinating time and place.”

 

“Ingeniously plotted, briskly narrated, and intellectually supple . . . this thriller brings not merely a huge cast of characters but a whole century vividly to life.”
—Newsweek

 

“[A] novel that will have you sitting up all night and calling in sick the next day. It’s that hard to put down. . . . A superior entertainment.”
—Houston Chronicle

 

“An erudite and entertaining tour de force.”
—People

 

“A whopping-good whodunit . . . [a] potent brew, good to the very last drop.”
—Mirabella

 

“Fans of such mystery/history hybrids as
The Name of the Rose
and
The Alienist
, pull up a chair and settle in.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2005 by Iain Pears

 

All rights reserved.

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eISBN : 978-1-440-68501-9

1. Portrait painters—Fiction. 2. Brittany (France)—Fiction. 3. Art critics—Fiction.
4. Islands—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6066.E167P
823’.914—dc22

W
ell, well, well. Come in, my dear fellow. Let me look at you. But first, an embrace; it is not often you see an old friend for the first time in nearly four years. You’ve not changed a bit. Well, of
course
I’m lying. The eyes are that little bit more lined, the skin has lost some of its texture, the hair is a touch more grey. We are both past our best. But at least you’re still slim, to the point of emaciation. How you can eat so much to so little effect never ceases to astonish. The differences between us grow year by year, as you undoubtedly noticed the moment you saw me.

I must confess I was disturbed when I received your proposal last month. I thought, to begin with, that it was a bad idea. I could hardly believe you were prepared to travel all this way just to see me. Hence my cautious reply, in case you were making sly fun of me. My years of exile have made me sensitive, as you will no doubt discover. But here you are, a figure from history itself—my history, at least, as I suppose you are still very much in the centre of things back in London.

A glass of wine to toast your arrival. The pick of the Luberon. A particularly good year, 1912, as I am sure you will agree, especially when carefully aged for nearly nine months. I joke, of course. I like the stuff, but hardly expect your sophisticated palate to be equally enthusiastic. It is all sun and earth; no artifice in its production whatsoever. Dark, strong and somewhat violent—a little like the people who make it, in fact. I’ve grown used to the taste; it makes a change from the beer and cider that are the staples hereabouts, and fine vintages would be wasted on me, even if you could get them. I have a barrel brought over on the boat every month or so and drink it until it turns to vinegar. Already has, you think? No; it’s meant to be like that—or if it isn’t, few on this island know any better. This is the wine of the peasantry, the fuel of France. Drink it and you become like them. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.