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Mural
Mural is a haunting ‘confession’ by a psychopath known only as D. Held in a secure facility, he has been asked by his psychiatrist to write down his thoughts, admissions, anxieties and uncertainties. They are at first revealed through the stories of other people’s lives and obsessions.
Specifically, D is pre-occupied with a British man who spent his early years as a schoolteacher in Australia before becoming a renowned sexologist. D is also consumed by Australia’s most prolific public artist, a man whose highly erotic watercolours are at odds with his stained-glass church windows. D writes of his meeting with a boyhood friend. He recounts the true tale of a Frenchman who went mad because he believed prehistoric stones in Brittany were shifting.
Downes navigates the real and the imagined, traversing fact and fiction. Mural is daring, acknowledging the influences of European writers such as Thomas Bernhard and WG Sebald while moving into new and original territory. It is both provocative and tender, a highly explosive fable about sexuality, religion, art and obsession.
‘Mural is an engrossing read! A fascinating, lively voiced protagonist with a strange tale to tell; I was really engaged from the start.’ – Dr Gwen Adshead, consultant forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist who has worked for many years with prisoners, including in Britain’s renowned high-security psychiatric hospital Broadmoor. Co-author of The Devil You Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry
‘Stephen Downes takes us inside the mind of a deranged and violent criminal. We don’t know – or need to know or perhaps even want to know – what ‘D’ has done. But the insight into his thinking and psychopathy, thanks to Downes’s elegant, taut and compelling storytelling – ensures that this short, powerful novel will shadow its readers long after the final page.’ – Paul Daley, author of Jesustown and writer for The Guardian
‘A gripping interior account of an unhinged and violent mind. The narrator, D, institutionalised and guilty of unnamed atrocities, directs an extended monologue to his psychiatrist that is in turn reflective, cultured and misanthropic. D is a memorable character, vividly a sharp-edged combination of erudition and paranoia. Downes skilfully creates a growing sense of menace as D’s thoughts twist and turn around his varied tics and fixations. This is a viscerally compelling portrait of derangement that will appeal to readers of quality fiction.’ – Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, University of Melbourne and co-author of Troubled Understanding and treating mental illness
‘Stephen Downes has written a captivating novel, if not to say a one-person drama. Mural traverses mental and psychological landscapes, interspersed with haunting illustrations that recall the melancholic doom of W. G. Sebald.’ – Uwe Schütte, academic, author, and leading Sebald scholar
Specifically, D is pre-occupied with a British man who spent his early years as a schoolteacher in Australia before becoming a renowned sexologist. D is also consumed by Australia’s most prolific public artist, a man whose highly erotic watercolours are at odds with his stained-glass church windows. D writes of his meeting with a boyhood friend. He recounts the true tale of a Frenchman who went mad because he believed prehistoric stones in Brittany were shifting.
Downes navigates the real and the imagined, traversing fact and fiction. Mural is daring, acknowledging the influences of European writers such as Thomas Bernhard and WG Sebald while moving into new and original territory. It is both provocative and tender, a highly explosive fable about sexuality, religion, art and obsession.
‘Mural is an engrossing read! A fascinating, lively voiced protagonist with a strange tale to tell; I was really engaged from the start.’ – Dr Gwen Adshead, consultant forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist who has worked for many years with prisoners, including in Britain’s renowned high-security psychiatric hospital Broadmoor. Co-author of The Devil You Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry
‘Stephen Downes takes us inside the mind of a deranged and violent criminal. We don’t know – or need to know or perhaps even want to know – what ‘D’ has done. But the insight into his thinking and psychopathy, thanks to Downes’s elegant, taut and compelling storytelling – ensures that this short, powerful novel will shadow its readers long after the final page.’ – Paul Daley, author of Jesustown and writer for The Guardian
‘A gripping interior account of an unhinged and violent mind. The narrator, D, institutionalised and guilty of unnamed atrocities, directs an extended monologue to his psychiatrist that is in turn reflective, cultured and misanthropic. D is a memorable character, vividly a sharp-edged combination of erudition and paranoia. Downes skilfully creates a growing sense of menace as D’s thoughts twist and turn around his varied tics and fixations. This is a viscerally compelling portrait of derangement that will appeal to readers of quality fiction.’ – Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, University of Melbourne and co-author of Troubled Understanding and treating mental illness
‘Stephen Downes has written a captivating novel, if not to say a one-person drama. Mural traverses mental and psychological landscapes, interspersed with haunting illustrations that recall the melancholic doom of W. G. Sebald.’ – Uwe Schütte, academic, author, and leading Sebald scholar
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First published September 1, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 10, 2024
Mural is a taut and haunting work of literary fiction. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it won awards one day.
Most of the story went over my head. Literary fiction is not one of my strong points but I could still see the underlying genius of it.
In Mural Stephen Downes explores the mind of a criminal. D, all the reader knows him by, is imprisoned for an unknown crime. He is asked by his psychiatrist Dr Reynolds to write a journal of his thoughts, his life's reflections. What evolves is a haunting tale of religion, art and obsession as the story twists around D's fixations.
Mural will appeal to readers working in the mental health industry and, with black & white images of artwork throughout, readers interested in the arts.
Most of the story went over my head. Literary fiction is not one of my strong points but I could still see the underlying genius of it.
In Mural Stephen Downes explores the mind of a criminal. D, all the reader knows him by, is imprisoned for an unknown crime. He is asked by his psychiatrist Dr Reynolds to write a journal of his thoughts, his life's reflections. What evolves is a haunting tale of religion, art and obsession as the story twists around D's fixations.
Mural will appeal to readers working in the mental health industry and, with black & white images of artwork throughout, readers interested in the arts.
September 3, 2024
Transgressive fiction, Wikipedia tells us, is a genre of literature which focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual or illicit ways. It can be harmless enough, as in Kate Chopin's The Awakening which depicted a woman who was fed up with the gender roles of her society and went out and did her own thing. Shocking in 1899, but her actions wouldn't raise an eyebrow today.
More recently, there is Iris, by Fiona Kelly McGregor. (2022, see my review). Based on the real-life story of Iris Webber, the novel tells the story of a petty criminal active in Sydney’s sly-grog underworld from the 1930s-1950s and it interrogates the way society criminalises its most marginalised people. Iris is a survivor, one who wants to be in charge of her own life. Today, the crimes she commits have mostly been decriminalised.
OTOH though I studied the use of an unreliable narrator and the burlesque of confessional writing in Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 Lolita at university, I doubt that it's prescribed reading anywhere today because of changes in attitudes towards child sexual abuse. And there's Patrick Suskind's thoroughly unpleasant 1985 Perfume which I read only because it was listed in 1001 Books. But the novel in this genre that really made me angry was Transgressions (1997) by Sarah Dunant, an author whose work I had really liked who went off on a most unpleasant tangent to eroticise a rape. You can read my review here.
WP goes on to say that:
All this is by way of an introduction Stephen Downes new novel Mural. With its disarming title, its pretty cover; its mystical endpapers depicting the megalithic stones at Carnac as depicted by an unknown artist — and numerous B&W images of artworks scattered through the text — a reader could be forgiven for thinking that the novel caters to one of my favourite genres: art in fiction.
But No. Not exactly.
TO read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/09/03/m...
More recently, there is Iris, by Fiona Kelly McGregor. (2022, see my review). Based on the real-life story of Iris Webber, the novel tells the story of a petty criminal active in Sydney’s sly-grog underworld from the 1930s-1950s and it interrogates the way society criminalises its most marginalised people. Iris is a survivor, one who wants to be in charge of her own life. Today, the crimes she commits have mostly been decriminalised.
OTOH though I studied the use of an unreliable narrator and the burlesque of confessional writing in Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 Lolita at university, I doubt that it's prescribed reading anywhere today because of changes in attitudes towards child sexual abuse. And there's Patrick Suskind's thoroughly unpleasant 1985 Perfume which I read only because it was listed in 1001 Books. But the novel in this genre that really made me angry was Transgressions (1997) by Sarah Dunant, an author whose work I had really liked who went off on a most unpleasant tangent to eroticise a rape. You can read my review here.
WP goes on to say that:
Transgressive fiction shares similarities with splatterpunk, noir, and erotic fiction in its willingness to portray forbidden behaviours and shock readers. But it differs in that protagonists often pursue means to better themselves and their surroundings—albeit unusual and extreme ones. Much transgressive fiction deals with searches for self-identity, inner peace, or personal freedom. Unbound by usual restrictions of taste and literary convention, its proponents claim that transgressive fiction is capable of incisive social commentary.
All this is by way of an introduction Stephen Downes new novel Mural. With its disarming title, its pretty cover; its mystical endpapers depicting the megalithic stones at Carnac as depicted by an unknown artist — and numerous B&W images of artworks scattered through the text — a reader could be forgiven for thinking that the novel caters to one of my favourite genres: art in fiction.
But No. Not exactly.
TO read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/09/03/m...
September 17, 2024
‘We hate being excluded, don’t we?’
If a mural is a large picture, then this ‘Mural’ is larger and more detailed than many. ‘Mural’ is described as ‘a haunting ‘confession’ by a psychopath known only as D. Held in a secure facility, he has been asked by his psychiatrist, Dr Reynolds, to write down his thoughts, admissions, anxieties and uncertainties. They are at first revealed through the stories of other people’s lives and obsessions.’
I want to know more about D’s crimes, and I want to know where he is being held. But as I kept reading, I realised such detail is largely irrelevant. As an aside, I was led to this novel by Lisa, one of my Chief Reading Enablers, whose review https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/09/03/m... had me ruminating about transgressive fiction while admiring the cover. Then, I ventured into the rabbit hole, reading how D used the story of Harry Ellis to best explain what provoked his crimes ‘through the prism of someone else’s revelations’. I kept being distracted: by my knowledge of Havelock Ellis, by the photographs scattered throughout the novel, by reference to the works of Mervyn Napier Waller some of whose works are in the Australian War Memorial’s Hall of Memory.
I kept arresting my read, to try to distinguish fact from fiction, to wonder about the significance of D’s meeting with his boyhood friend, about the role of both religion and parents, about life and truth. The further the novel progressed, the more I wondered about the many ways in which parents can destroy their children.
I circled back to the epigraph:
‘Parents make a child and strive above all else to destroy it. I said, my parents just like yours and every parent altogether and everywhere. Parents afford the luxury of children and kill them. And they all have their assorted, equivalent methods.’ (Reunion Thomas Bernhard)
Yes, I can distinguish some of the influences on D, but without knowing what he did or specifically why, I am left to ponder. Which may well be Mr Downes’s intention.
‘My mind, at any rate, is where I’ve always lived.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
If a mural is a large picture, then this ‘Mural’ is larger and more detailed than many. ‘Mural’ is described as ‘a haunting ‘confession’ by a psychopath known only as D. Held in a secure facility, he has been asked by his psychiatrist, Dr Reynolds, to write down his thoughts, admissions, anxieties and uncertainties. They are at first revealed through the stories of other people’s lives and obsessions.’
I want to know more about D’s crimes, and I want to know where he is being held. But as I kept reading, I realised such detail is largely irrelevant. As an aside, I was led to this novel by Lisa, one of my Chief Reading Enablers, whose review https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/09/03/m... had me ruminating about transgressive fiction while admiring the cover. Then, I ventured into the rabbit hole, reading how D used the story of Harry Ellis to best explain what provoked his crimes ‘through the prism of someone else’s revelations’. I kept being distracted: by my knowledge of Havelock Ellis, by the photographs scattered throughout the novel, by reference to the works of Mervyn Napier Waller some of whose works are in the Australian War Memorial’s Hall of Memory.
I kept arresting my read, to try to distinguish fact from fiction, to wonder about the significance of D’s meeting with his boyhood friend, about the role of both religion and parents, about life and truth. The further the novel progressed, the more I wondered about the many ways in which parents can destroy their children.
I circled back to the epigraph:
‘Parents make a child and strive above all else to destroy it. I said, my parents just like yours and every parent altogether and everywhere. Parents afford the luxury of children and kill them. And they all have their assorted, equivalent methods.’ (Reunion Thomas Bernhard)
Yes, I can distinguish some of the influences on D, but without knowing what he did or specifically why, I am left to ponder. Which may well be Mr Downes’s intention.
‘My mind, at any rate, is where I’ve always lived.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
September 26, 2024
Stephen Downes has written a captivating, if not downright risky one-man narrative based on the mysterious, psychopath ‘D’, a man who has spent more of his life inside than outside, detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure; this time he believes he is in for the longest time, maybe forever.
His Psychiatrist Dr R (Reynolds) asks him to write down his thoughts, his life history, his journey to where he finds himself at this point in time. He has a laptop which even in his reckoning can’t possibly do anyone any harm.
At no stage to we discover what ‘D’ has done, but early in the narrative it is clearly understood he is obsessed with a young Englishman who came to Australia to breath the fresh air and recover his health. His father was a Ships Captain, his mother brought him up and was both mother and father to the children. ‘D’ considers the relationship between the son and mother to be one that was not a healthy relationship. Is this a clue as to what formed the man ‘D’ or the family he is descended from is ponderable?
Moving long at a relatively fast pace, the more ‘D’ writes, the deeper he descends into his own form of psychosis, which is at times horrifying but strangely addictive, as ‘D’ moves from fantasy to fantasy, never really explaining whether this is his reality or simply just reality.
A paragraph from Thomas Bernhard’s Reunion, ‘Parents make a child and strive above all to destroy it. I said, my parents just like yours and every parent altogether and everywhere. Parents afford the luxury of children. And they all have their assorted equivalent methods’ commences the story which concludes in a similar vein, leaving the reader with a series of unanswered, but interestingly imaginable conclusions.
Tightly told, Mural is interspersed with illustrations which are the focus of the delusion, or the narrative being told at the time; reality or not is of no consideration. Mental Health is laid bare, the well-constructed thoughts carefully present to craft a hauntingly powerful novel.
His Psychiatrist Dr R (Reynolds) asks him to write down his thoughts, his life history, his journey to where he finds himself at this point in time. He has a laptop which even in his reckoning can’t possibly do anyone any harm.
At no stage to we discover what ‘D’ has done, but early in the narrative it is clearly understood he is obsessed with a young Englishman who came to Australia to breath the fresh air and recover his health. His father was a Ships Captain, his mother brought him up and was both mother and father to the children. ‘D’ considers the relationship between the son and mother to be one that was not a healthy relationship. Is this a clue as to what formed the man ‘D’ or the family he is descended from is ponderable?
Moving long at a relatively fast pace, the more ‘D’ writes, the deeper he descends into his own form of psychosis, which is at times horrifying but strangely addictive, as ‘D’ moves from fantasy to fantasy, never really explaining whether this is his reality or simply just reality.
A paragraph from Thomas Bernhard’s Reunion, ‘Parents make a child and strive above all to destroy it. I said, my parents just like yours and every parent altogether and everywhere. Parents afford the luxury of children. And they all have their assorted equivalent methods’ commences the story which concludes in a similar vein, leaving the reader with a series of unanswered, but interestingly imaginable conclusions.
Tightly told, Mural is interspersed with illustrations which are the focus of the delusion, or the narrative being told at the time; reality or not is of no consideration. Mental Health is laid bare, the well-constructed thoughts carefully present to craft a hauntingly powerful novel.
August 15, 2025
Quite an indescribable reading experience. Our titular character and narrator D, who is being detained for unknown crimes, details his thoughts and life through the lens of other people and their lives/obsessions. More of a character study than anything, this is not my usual book at all.
I try and pick up one book from the library that I have never heard of, and this one captured me with both its beautiful cover and its Australian setting (in the end it got,,, disturbingly close to where I grew up haha). Something about reading a book and knowing the setting so intimately is so exciting. By the time I actually got around to starting this I had completely forgotten the premise and only remembered those two things.
The first 20 or so pages I was unconvinced and then it suddenly grabbed me and I devoured this, could not put it down. D's narration is gripping and his charming and chatty tone and genuine interest in his topics really works to keep the reader engaged. And it makes the moments where his psychopathy shines through or he directly addresses Dr Reynold's feel all the more stark and effective. The way the narrative bounces around all the topics and blends fact and fiction is disorienting but never confusing. It put me off-guard but I didn't feel lost. And I enjoyed even the dullest of topics D had to share. I also liked the blending of fact and fiction, it sent me down some research rabbit holes after I finished.
I really liked the more personal parts where D talks through his own life but I also appreciated how much we never found out about him. It got me thinking about parents and religion and obsession. And left a deep impression on me and I cannot stop thinking about this book.
There were some parts I didn't love. I really would have liked a more solid conclusion to some of D's stories and the conclusion of the book itself felt cheap. But I think that also works for the message so I am not too mad about it haha.
I try and pick up one book from the library that I have never heard of, and this one captured me with both its beautiful cover and its Australian setting (in the end it got,,, disturbingly close to where I grew up haha). Something about reading a book and knowing the setting so intimately is so exciting. By the time I actually got around to starting this I had completely forgotten the premise and only remembered those two things.
The first 20 or so pages I was unconvinced and then it suddenly grabbed me and I devoured this, could not put it down. D's narration is gripping and his charming and chatty tone and genuine interest in his topics really works to keep the reader engaged. And it makes the moments where his psychopathy shines through or he directly addresses Dr Reynold's feel all the more stark and effective. The way the narrative bounces around all the topics and blends fact and fiction is disorienting but never confusing. It put me off-guard but I didn't feel lost. And I enjoyed even the dullest of topics D had to share. I also liked the blending of fact and fiction, it sent me down some research rabbit holes after I finished.
I really liked the more personal parts where D talks through his own life but I also appreciated how much we never found out about him. It got me thinking about parents and religion and obsession. And left a deep impression on me and I cannot stop thinking about this book.
There were some parts I didn't love. I really would have liked a more solid conclusion to some of D's stories and the conclusion of the book itself felt cheap. But I think that also works for the message so I am not too mad about it haha.
January 5, 2025
Mural is an unusual novel. More of a character study than anything else, it is told in first person by a character known only as "D", who is incarcerated for unspecified crimes, and who relates a series of anecdotes to his psychotherapist, Dr Reynolds. The novel is also set in Australia, and the narrative is accompanied in places by black and white photos. The stories D relates, either from his experience, research, or told to him, such as the history of his fellow Methodist, PW, bounce around from topic to topic without following a plot as such. But that is the beauty, and the point, of Downes' incisive novel, as these pieces come together to form the mosaic of the whole, like an artowrk by Waller, where each story serves as a picture to form the mural that is D's mind.
July 30, 2025
Mural is a haunting psychological novel narrated by a psychopath known only as 'D'. Confined to a secure facility, he is encouraged by his psychiatrist, Dr. Reynolds, to document his thoughts and memories, gradually revealing a deeply unsettling inner world.
August 22, 2024
Absolutely enthralling - now I just have to pull my thoughts together to write a proper response!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews