Publisher: Booksurge Publishing

ISBN: 1-4196-0276-4

The following review was contributed by:  Theresa Derwin: Click here to read more of Theresa’s reviews

Atmospheric, undeniably well written and full of stunning imagery, The Painter is not for your casual light-hearted reader. There are very few laughs to be found in Sigal’s debut novel, and those that are found, are covered in a dark, wry veneer. Sigal’s novel is witty, but at the same time, can tumble the reader into a surreal world of talking television sets, addiction fueled hallucinations and gloomy observations on life. Yet through it all, there is a naïve optimism and hope, which is surprising. After all, the main protagonists when we meet them are severely devoid of hope. In their own way each character is an addict. Adrian is addicted to cocaine; Ronald to cheap whiskey; and Brian, to beating his wife. Whilst not exactly celebrating addiction, Sigal plunges the reader into the addict’s mind and embraces the apparent joy of that moment when nothing else matters; only the fix. But the ‘fix’ is a myth. It is a momentary escape from a barren and jaded existence, a world in which each man has either seen too much or experienced too much and the only answer is oblivion. Until the moment when each man finds meaning and purpose, through the work of The Painter.

Consumed by grief, John Aaker is The Painter, a man mourning the untimely death of his wife, raped and murdered in the most brutal fashion. With nothing else to live for, John is determined not to give up on life, convinced that his wife wants him to be happy. Struggling to cope with his grief and an unfathomable loss, there is only one question he wants the answer to; “What’s wrong with the world?” In an attempt to find the answer, John is dragged along on a bizarre journey to another dimension, finding out to his mortification that it’s all a big mistake. It is a clerical error, which has plummeted planet 600359 (a.k.a. Earth) into an abyss of self-destruction. “The Management” hasn’t been keeping a proper eye on the planet for millennia. What’s wrong with the world, then? The answer: it was misfiled. The solution: Send in The Painter. It is through the beauty of ‘the image’, a painting of sorts, that John, The Painter, has his faith in humanity restored and embarks on a mission to share this image with his fellow inhabitants, namely Adrian, Ronald and Brian.

With touches of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide, mingled with contemporary fiction, this novel is a bit of an oddity, the Science Fiction angle coming as a surprise. Sometimes “wordy” where a simple gesture or image might suffice, the Painter still remains a quirky exploration of love, loss and the meaning of life and is a notably ambitious first novel.