Water

Jasper Joffe

Nathaniel Water is a doodling, neurotic, self-obsessed young British artist. His career is on the up, but his love life has taken a nosedive. Bored, he proposes marriage to his beautiful Slovak girlfriend, Jelena, with whom he fights constantly. But then he meets Harriet, a curator from Berlin ...

Can Water find happiness? Or is he caught in a downward spiral of nihilism and endless art openings? Delve in to this barking tale of love, family foibles and fame to find out.

Review by Francis (280606) Rating (8/10)

Review by Francis
This is a book about an artist, but you don't need to know a lot about art to enjoy it. The main character "Nathaniel Water" is an ambitious egotistical neurotic contemporary artist, seeming to reflect some aspects of the author's persona. First you hate him, then he grows on you, like strong cheese or wine. There is a deliberate blurring of the boundaries between autobiography and fiction, with the narrative switching between first and third person, and doodles breaking up the text.

This is where a lot of the humour derives from, with the narrator breaking in to demolish some of the pretensions of the protagonist, and undermine his breathtaking arrogance. We follow his relationship with the tempestuous Jelena and rebound to the stable but less exciting Harriet. His relationships, and misadventures with women are the heart of the book, and the humour turns to melancholy, which by the end is quite moving.

All this is set in the contemporary art world, not a field I am an expert judge of, but the cynical expose nevertheless seems accurate and amusing. I picked up this book on the table of a big bookshop, and liking the cover and blurb, bought it. There not being many reviews of it I have read, I would like people to know more about this funny and touching book.
Francis (28th June 2006)