John Bentley Mays (1941–2016)

* I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book. *

A racist narrator with a murky past is holed up in an abandoned hotel. He writes a memoir, ostensibly addressed to a young boy also in the hotel, which describes the career of a German performance artist called Jupp (who is clearly based on the artist Joseph Beuys). Jupp's art expresses his attempts to come to grips with his post-war traumas, as the writing of this memoir serves to allow the narrator to lay out his own sordid past.

This is a pretty grim story, with two main characters who are both intentionally unempathetic; both are intensely flawed men in their different ways. The nature of the narrator's character, the solitary life of his subject, and the almost impenetrable nature of his art, make this a challenging read.… (meer)