Dinner in the Labyrinth

by Douglas Atwill

Overview

Graham Obermann is an established biographer of the Post-Impressionists. He is married to Celia Prosper, a modernist painter well-regarded by critics and collectors. As Obermann organizes a birthday party for Celia, looking after all the details, he describes in a single day the odd Prosper family and his attraction to his novelist brother-in-law Karl. Several significant events test all the characters in this family saga with subplots of many generations, and a new generation making its mark. Other books by Douglas Atwill, all from Sunstone Press, are "Why I Won't Be Going to Lunch Anymore," "The Galisteo Escarpment," "Imperial Yellow," "Creep Around the Corner," "The Oyster Shell Driveway," "Husband Memory Pickles," and "Douglas Atwill Paintings." Atwill lives in Santa Fe, painting New Mexico landscapes and gardens.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632935687
Publisher:	Sunstone Press
Publication date:	01/20/2016
Pages:	218
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

DOUGLAS ATWILL was born in Pasadena, California, earned a BA from the University of Texas at Austin and he served in the Army Counterintelligence Corps. After a long sojourn on a Piedmont cattle farm in Virginia and on the move throughout Europe, he settled in Santa Fe to pursue painting full-time. From a studio on Canyon Road, he paints landscapes and paintings of his own gardens. His work is shown in galleries throughout the West. Atwill's avocation of restoring adobe houses and building them anew has earned him a reputation for excellence in taste and design, and his houses have been featured in many magazines and books. His other books include the novels "The Galisteo Escarpment," "Imperial Yellow," "Creep Around the Corner," and "The Oyster Shell Driveway," the short story collections "Why I Won't Be Going to Lunch Anymore" and "Husband Memory Pickles," and "Douglas Atwill Paintings," a collection of Atwill's New Mexico garden and landscape paintings.

Editorial Reviews

2016-03-18
A biographer of artists reflects upon his long-term romantic relationships with his painter wife and her novelist brother in Atwill's (The Galisteo Escarpment, 2008, etc.) novel. One July morning in 2011, Graham Obermann is handling the final details for a scheduled birthday party that evening for his wife, modern artist Celia Prosper. People will expect him to toast Celia at the party as the love of his life, but "that is not entirely true," he tells readers. "I love another one of the Prospers as much, if not more." The novel then crosscuts between Graham's party preparations and his history with the Prosper family, which began when he and Celia's brother, Karl, shared an apartment during graduate school in 1960. Graham soon accompanied Karl home to the Prosper compound in Santa Fe, New Mexico (where Graham now lives), which was dominated by patriarch Wingrave Prosper, the first of many artists about whom Graham will write biographies. Graham marries and has children with Celia, but she accepts the fact that he spends his summers in Europe with novelist Karl, where the two men pursue a sexual relationship as well as their individual writing. Several tragedies punctuate the proceedings—Wingrave dies in a blaze that has roots in his parental transgressions, Karl experiences trauma from his stint in the Vietnam War, and other Prosper relatives tragically perish. A wrap-up at the story's end reveals yet another shocking event and a new relationship. Santa Fe-based Atwill has crafted a colorful, complex novel. He presents his main character in the first person in its 2011 segments and in the third-person in all others; the result is a rich, prismatic portrait that touches on Graham's musings on his own nuanced sexuality as well as his various studies of postimpressionist artists. He draws secondary characters and subplots less successfully, though; Karl's appeal, for example, is more stated than shown, and Wingrave's sins are worthy of further development, perhaps in a separate novel. Overall, however, this is an ambitious, beautifully rendered effort. An intense, impressionistic exploration of art and sexuality.

Kirkus Reviews