The Death of Noah Glass

by Gail Jones

The art historian Noah Glass, having just returned from a trip to Sicily, is discovered floating face down in the swimming pool at his Sydney apartment block. His adult children, Martin and Evie, must come to terms with the shock of their father’s death. But a sculpture has gone missing from a museum in Palermo, and Noah is a suspect. The police are investigating.

None of it makes any sense. Martin sets off to Palermo in search of answers about his father’s activities, while Evie moves into Noah’s apartment, waiting to learn where her life might take her. Retracing their father’s steps in their own way, neither of his children can see the path ahead.

Gail Jones’s mesmerising new novel tells a story about parents and children, and explores the overlapping patterns that life makes. The Death of Noah Glass is about love and art, about grief and happiness, about memory and the mystery of time.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Australia, 21st Century, Novels, Contemporary, Crime

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Gail Jones is the author of two short-story collections, a critical monograph, and the novels BLACK MIRROR, SIXTY LIGHTS, DREAMS OF SPEAKING, SORRY and FIVE BELLS.

Three times shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, her prizes include the WA Premier's Award for Fiction, the Nita B. Kibble Award, the Steele Rudd Award, the Age Book of the Year Award, the Adelaide Festival Award for Fiction and the ASAL Gold Medal. She has also been shortlisted for international awards, including the IMPAC and the Prix Femina.

Her fiction has been translated into nine languages. Gail has recently taken up a Professorship at UWS.

Reviews

[✨ jami ✨ · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of those books where it's like "hey, that prose sure is beautiful BUT, it's not pretty enough to trick me into not being bored"

I liked the art history and the brief heist/art theft elements but the main two characters were boring and hard to connect to. For me, there was little memorable about their characters which is a problem in a purely character-driven novel like this

[Bianca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been meaning to read Jones for a couple of years. This novel won several awards so I decided to borrow it instead of her latest offering.

The art historian Noah Glass's death at sixty-seven is unexpected. His grown-up children, Martin, a successful painter, forty-two, divorced, and his sister, Evie, single, a part-time bookseller, former philosophy academic, are in shock. When they hear that their father might have been involved in the theft of a famous sculpture from Palermo, Italy their incredulity makes them question how well they knew their father.

Grief, family dysfunction, memory, art history, loneliness, existential dread, culture are some of the themes of this novel. I enjoyed it, I appreciated the writing style, even though I felt emotionally distant.

I'll definitely be reading more by Gail Jones.

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Already overwrought with grief, Martin and Evie Glass are quite mystified when they are called in to the police station and told by a detective that their father, Noah, only a day after his funeral, is a suspect in the theft of a sculpture from a museum in Palermo where he was holidaying. Mystified, not only because both siblings could never believe their father a criminal, but because their father, although an art historian, had always loathed the art market. Even though their father’s body was found fully clothed, face down in his apartment block’s swimming pool, the coroner had ruled out foul play and declared the cause of death as a heart attack. Both have no idea why their father is a suspect. Martin wants both he and his sister to travel to Italy to try to find out what happened, but Evie decides to move into their father’s apartment leaving Martin to make the journey alone.

The narrative then splits between the past and the present. In the past narrative we witness Noah’s childhood and upbringing, his meeting and relationship with Dora, a potential suspect for the theft. While in the present we are presented with both Martin’s story, as he tries to solve the mystery of the stolen sculpture and his father’s death, and Evie’s story, as she tries to piece together Noah’s life from the curios and items left in his apartment. Although both siblings are devastated, Martin was the favourite, and Evie has always been a tad bitter, resentful, about this. Noah spent a great deal of time with Martin in his life and Evie feels she was left out for much of it. As both siblings recall memories of times with their father you realise that they were competing for his love and attention.

Jones focuses in on family relationships and their dynamics. How they can morph and change after a family member is lost from this relationship. Memories and their recollection are used extensively, and Jones gives us three perspectives in which to view them from.

For me there was an indelible pathos shrouding this novel from start to finish. Grief is a major theme and each character experiences it in varying forms. Grief and how one deals with it, how to ultimately recover from it and move on, is the heart of this novel.

Jones’ prose is impressive and while not being poetic, certainly flows nicely from the first chapter to the last. Although the melancholic atmosphere created by the narrative may feel pervasive, it is a thoroughly enjoyable read. 4 stars.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

“As she stood on the deck of the ferry at Circular Quay, Evie was conscious of storing up things for future recollection. Here was the lustily gleaming harbour, the absurdly golden midday, and the bridge, swinging away like a door on brass hinges as the ferry executed a slow turn. Above was an infinity of blue-becoming-black reaching far into space, almost shocking after the grey security of Melbourne. The scale of things was all wrong, too lavish, too sunny, too geared to applause.”

The Death Of Noah Glass is the seventh novel by award-winning Australian author, Gail Jones. When sixty-seven-year-old art historian, Noah Glass is found face-down, fully clothed in the swimming pool of his Elizabeth Bay apartment block, the coroner rules it a heart attack. But the day after the funeral, his children are told that Noah was the suspect in an art theft. The Carabinieri Cultural Heritage Protection Agency in Sicily have advised Sydney detective Frank Malone that a national treasure, a small bust of Eleonora Ragusa sculpted by Vincenzo Ragusa, has been stolen from a gallery in Palermo. Noah had returned from Sicily just four weeks previous.

But Martin and Evie are dismissive: their father’s field of interest was quattrocento painting; he had no interest in sculpture at all. While Evie is meant to be sorting out Noah’s apartment, Martin goes to Palermo to see what he can find out. But when he gets there, he is frustrated by his father’s Italian colleagues: absent, reticent, vague. And his artistic soul is soon distracted by what he sees around him.

“We have just endured, she thought, the funeral of our father and my brother is still as he was, negligent, self-centred, without a clue. He is still the cocksure adolescent bound for fame and glory, still contesting his father’s authority. They were so alike, father and son, that they loved each other in self-confirmation. The equation of what they were was a tangled knot.”

For both of them, their grief is ever present, and they are constantly reminded of their singular but loving upbringing by this good man, respected by all. They connect again, skyping to remind each other: “Martin still envied her canny poise, the way she made her own knowledge, sagely and systematically, always locating a hidden order. Their disorderly lives had needed this incongruity – her lists and his images, her calm, withholding quiet and his noisier rebellion. He saw it now, her aisles of mysterious space, mapped alphabetically step by step, while his gestures were rooms, broad openings on either side. Still, they fitted together; still, they were complements.”

Four narrative strands tell the story: Martin and Evie perspective detail events after Noah’s death, while Noah’s story of his stay in Sicily is supplemented by descriptions of significant life events from his childhood onwards. While there is certainly a mystery, this novel is very much character-driven, and the relationships between the siblings and their closeness to their father, shown in common memories and habits are the strength of the story.

The descriptions of the two cities (Sydney, Palermo) with which Jones suffuses her text are highly evocative and show her captivation with these places. The depth of her research is apparent with the inclusion of information about art, about the theft of Italian artworks and about Western Australia’s leprosarium. Marvellous and moving, a superb read.

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gail Jones is an Australian writer whose work reaches well beyond purely Australian concerns and has been translated into at least twelve languages.

She’s a gifted creator of scenes and atmospheres, able to chose words that perfectly describe, for instance, the bright, dancing light of Sydney, and the zombie-like state required to survive the long haul flights that have to be endured to take Australians just about anywhere.

In a 2018 interview she says she’s mostly interested in ideas, not in plot development. "Novels are machines for thinking as well as feeling. Plot points are really engines for dispersed, unstable ideas about art, family and time. Especially time, and the way it folds and crumples, its patterns and repetitions, how it stops in front of a painting." (https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/...)

So, in a book that’s ostensibly about art theft and unexpected death, we have many beautifully written scenes, each of which features one of the three main characters (Noah Glass and his children Martin and Evie) in a specific time or location, ranging from Italy and Sicily to Sydney.
The narrative threads are weak, and I found it oddly reassuring that Jones herself says a strong plot doesn't interest her. In fact, the plot doesn't make sense to me at all – disconcerting in something that presents as a mystery.

The following extracts from Australian reviews give a much truer picture of what the reader is in for:
‘…this is an intellectually strenuous entertainment concerned with the nature and loss of senses, of filial obligations and their cost, of the vertiginous role of chance. Jones has challenged herself – and her readers – in another rich and accomplished work.’
Peter Pierce, Sydney Morning Herald

‘This polished, pensive novel that swirls so much about, tantalising with implications amid the patterned intricacy of linked scenes, returning symbols and motifs. It’s a book that needs to be read closely…The Death of Noah Glass is engaging. It’s a book about ways of seeing and about the gaps that persist between vision and understanding. And in the end this novel—which is dedicated to the memory of Jones’s father—is also about patrimony as the pattern and measure that fathers leave behind them.’ The Saturday Paper

‘From the Renaissance to the contemporary era, from Italy to Australia and back via Japan, Jones demonstrates not a quaint equivalence between the sister arts, but an unruly dynamic of disjunction, rupture, play and appropriation that sets off a force field of narrative and semiotic energies.’ Robert Dixon, Sydney Review of Books

And see:
Kerryn Goldsworthy review https://www.australianbookreview.com....

[Text Publishing]

‘The Death of Noah Glass is a transportive novel, dreamy and evocative, and full of richly-drawn characters. It’s sure to send first-time readers of Gail Jones on a journey through her extensive back catalogue.’
Culturefly

‘Jones writes with perception on the emotional chaos wrought by grief, and how difficult it can be to operate within relationships when there is so much that will remain unknown.’
Otago Daily Times

‘Jones displays a formidable, eclectic knowledge that she distributes among her characters...an intellectually strenuous entertainment concerned with the nature and loss of senses, of filial obligations and their cost, of the vertiginous role of chance. Jones has challenged herself – and her readers – in another rich and accomplished work.’
Sydney Morning Herald

‘Beautifully lit…Jones’ writing demands that the read slow down in order to enjoy every word. Martin is an artist, but then again so is the author, and she too notices hue, texture and nuance.’
Big Issue

‘This is a novel dominated by rich and vivid descriptions of personal interiors and public exteriors, of thought processes and intense associations wrought by the places Martin and Evie find themselves as they uncover truths.’
Herald Sun

‘In poetic prose that calls for slower reading to fully appreciate its metaphoric meaning, the narrative, as the mystery is untangled, explores the effects of grief and loss and the theme of time. You could re-read this book for the pleasure and stimulation of the language alone.’
Good Reading


‘This polished, pensive novel that swirls so much about, tantalising with implications amid the patterned intricacy of linked scenes, returning symbols and motifs. It’s a book that needs to be read closely…The Death of Noah Glass is engaging. It’s a book about ways of seeing and about the gaps that persist between vision and understanding. And in the end this novel—which is dedicated to the memory of Jones’s father—is also about patrimony as the pattern and measure that fathers leave behind them.’
Saturday Paper

‘The Death of Noah Glass is among (Jones’s) finest work and I expect it will be among this year’s outstanding novels.’
Australian

‘The plot is one of Jones’s most straightforward, but as always it is the links and echoes, the patterns that she sees in life and the way such patterns are represented and become part of our internal landscape that inform and fascinate, and make her work so rewarding.’
Adelaide Advertiser

‘The Death of Noah Glass is a superb novel full of sadness and mystery. It further confirms Gail Jones’s reputation as one of our great writers.’
Readings

‘…Swooningly lyrical, carrying the reader along in the wake of its beauty.’
Australian Book Review


‘In all of Gail Jones’s writing, words bump up against images from art and cinema—visual keys to convey what narrative may not.’
Saturday Paper

‘Told masterfully from the perspective of three finely drawn characters, The Death of Noah Glass combines an enjoyable escapade involving art theft, mafia conspiracy, romance and a suspicious death with a literary exploration of grief, identity and the power of the past to damage present lives. Fans of Jones will not be disappointed, and new readers should find much to recommend it.’
Angela Elizabeth, Books+Publishing

‘Extraordinary description of street life in Sydney…Brilliant.’
ABC RN Bookshelf

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I needed time to reflect on this novel before writing a review. I so admire Gail Jones’ work but in this novel her brilliant use of language tended to distance me from the story. She packs so many ideas into her books and her style is cerebral too. I’ve heard it described as ‘cool’ (and not in the popular meaning of the word).

In this novel Jones takes a familiar scenario - the death of a parent and the reactions and interactions of adult children. Following the unexpected (but ultimately not suspicious) death of Noah Glass, his children (Martin and Evie) are shocked when a Sydney detective starts asking questions about a missing sculpture that Noah is suspected of recently having stolen when he was in Sicily. Martin goes to Sicily in search of answers while Evie moves into her father’s apartment and starts to sort through his belongings.

The novel moves between the present and the past when Noah, as a widowed father, taught his children to think about art, art history and the world of ideas. Martin has become an artist, Evie works in a bookshop after giving up an academic career. Evie’s way of coping is to make alphabetical lists of all sorts of objects and concepts - she has a phenomenal memory. Jones asks the reader to enter this world of ideas, a world through which emotions are often distanced or repressed but from which they break loose and threaten Martin and Evie’s sense of themselves and their father. Jones is also interested in what we ‘see’ and how we see it (one of her characters is blind.) This is a recurring theme in her novels.

The search for the missing sculpture is a mysterious thread running through the novel but never (for me at least) the main purpose. What I will remember of this novel is the precision of the prose used to convey complex ideas and feelings and the wonderful descriptions of both Sicily and Sydney. Gail Jones offers so much more than character and story. On reflection, four stars.

[Michael Livingston · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

This is a complex, allusive book about grief, art, and memory. I struggled at the start to really connect with it - there's more concentration required here than I was really giving it and I felt throughout as if a lot of the art-world references were slipping past me unnoticed. The book speeds up a bit as the plot unfolds, even if the central heist is as far from a page-turning art-crime thrill-ride that it's possible for an art theft to be. The complex relationships between the three family members are brilliantly developed - the ways in which Noah's death brings the siblings together even while highlighting the fissures in their relationship felt true. Still, I was left feeling as though this was just a little too smart for me.

[Kirsten McKenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful, beautiful writing.
Stunning prose with glorious imagery. The colours! And the lists. The lists were especially wonderful.
The cast of characters is small, and beautifully rendered. The dual settings of Australia and Italy lent themselves to picturesque views and commentary about the weather.
The plot was a little slower than I usually enjoy, but that is par for the course for literary fiction.
I can't gush about the plot, because there were too many threads left unwoven. I didn't feel that the ending was worthy of how beautifully the book was written. I wanted another couple of chapters to tidy things away. There was too much left unsaid.

[Debbie Robson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gail Jones is a wonderful but I believe a neglected Australian novelist. One of the reasons I think that she doesn’t have a larger following is that she is constantly changing her writing subjects. She switches effortlessly from contemporary settings such as The Death of Noah Glass or Guide to Berlin (which I have yet to read) to Sixty Lights set in the late 19th century. I was planning to read Guide to Berlin next but I think Five Bells sounds more intriguing. I have recently written a short story featuring Kenneth Slessor and his poetry and I would like to see how Jones evokes Sydney Harbour.
In The Death of Noah Glass the setting is a harbour side suburb in Sydney and later in the novel, Sicily. After the sudden death of their art historian father, Noah Glass, his children Martin and Evie, reunited for his funeral, must come to terms with his death and his legacy. For me, their relationship (sometimes strained) is the backbone of the novel. Martin, the artist, was always the favoured one, with a career of his own, whilst Evie is intelligent, also inheriting her love of art from her father but currently working in a bookshop in Melbourne and rather lost.
I love the connection the siblings share over art. Their discussions of very esoteric things like the Neptunist de Saussure and a clock with the legend Glasgow 1910. I would have loved more time spent with them after their father’s funeral but the police contact them about a theft of a sculpture they believe Noah Glass was involved in and the narrative moves on.
For me the novel loses some momentum after this, just when the tension should have increased. We go back to Noah’s childhood and the brother and sister (in the contemporary timeline) are separated: Martin going to Palermo by himself to investigate the alleged theft. While he is away Evie becomes involved with a disabled man.
I would love to quote from the novel (as I generally do because I believe it is important for a would be reader to read a sample of the prose of a writer they are interested in) but my copy was an uncorrected proof.
Despite some reservations there is something quite satisfying in this novel and it definitely rewards the discerning reader.

[Seema Rao · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literary ~ Gentle ~ Weighty

tl;dr: Adult children learn their father might have been an art thief after his death.

Being an adult child is a bit like double exposure, all your childhood standing with your adult self. Your parents remain your parents, and in this book, the baggage sticks with you. Noah Glass is an academic, described fairly stereotypically, as measured and interior. After death, his children learn he has been implicated in a crime. Art history is a large part of my professional life and career, and I have a particular love for the Quattrocento, the field of Italian art that Noah Glass studied. This book isn't really about art history, though there are moments the art historian might see allusions to art. Mostly, this book is about the secrets we often keep from our families and how that affects our relationships with them. On that level, this book is strong, with beautifully described characters, especially Noah's wounded son.

3.5

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Seema Rao Write : Instagram| Blog| Twitter|

[Lesley Moseley · Rating 5 out of 5]

UPDATE : Had already decided to up this rating to a 5 stars, when I saw it is shortlisted for our Miles Franklin Award.

Nearer to 5, but not quite as I too had to backtrack to be sure who was 'thinking'. (Not that easy with an EBOOK.), a few times.

However, absolutely love her work. Still pondering the final chapter, and have decided it's a case of 'did you pay attention'....

Brilliant...

[Dennis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pompous

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

The description for this book leads a reader to expect a literary mystery. Two adult siblings trying to figure out whether their father, who has recently passed away, was potentially involved in an art theft. And in theory the book delivers on both accounts, it’s highly literary and there is something of a mystery to unravel. But, sadly, it didn’t really work for me on either account. Which isn’t to say it wasn’t a good book, objectively it was, it featured some genuinely great writing, linguistic flights of fancy, first rate word crafting, really. But for something with such an intriguing premise and such obvious narrative skill, the book didn’t engage at all. In fact, it maintained a certain emotional distance throughout that combined with the slow, plodding at times, actually, writing made for a meditative, pensive read that came across as distinctly monotonous and unexciting. Not that a story of strained family relations and death ought to be especially exciting, but this was plot wise practically an international suspense thriller and it just didn’t thrill at all. And thriller aspect aside, purely as a drama it was also something of a drag. It never veered into tedium, but it lurked near the fence. To be fair, it’s entirely possible I wasn’t in the right mood for it…see, I am totally looking for excuses, because I intellectually recognize a work of quality, but emotionally this just did nothing for me. Which is ironic or something like that, because the book is all about emotions, it’s under dialogued and heavily descriptive, Every action of every character is analyzed and explained. There is such coherency of intent behind it all, but not much to really grab readers and make them care. Very peculiar. Such a smart book, rendered with great meticulousness and care and terrific language, but didn’t really sing for me. I appreciated it, but the tone and the pacing alone made it difficult to love. I'm a failry fast reader, but this one moved so slowly. Nevertheless, it’s always nice to read some proper literature plus it kind of sort of counts as international reading…Australian author, international settings and so on. Thanks Netgalley.

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fine writing and evocative description of place were not enough for me to be absorbed by this book. I came to the end wondering what I was supposed to take from it. I failed to connect with any of the characters, who remained two-dimensional: despite all the information the writer told me about their emotions and experiences, they did not come to life for me.

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Noah Glass was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1946.’

Noah Glass is dead. His body is discovered, floating face down, fully clothes in the swimming pool of his apartment block in Sydney. Noah Glass, widowed, the father of two adult children – Martin and Evie, an art historian and specialist in the fifteenth century artist Piero della Francesca, had just returned from a trip to Palermo. Noah Glass seems to have died of natural causes, but as Martin and Evie find out, he’s a suspect in the theft of a sculpture from a museum in Palermo. The police are investigating.

Martin and Evie struggle to make sense of what has happened, as does the reader. Ms Jones takes us back through Noah’s life. At the same time as we accompany Martin and Evie while they seek to understand Noah’s death and make sense of his life. Did he steal the sculpture? And, if he did, why? Martin travels to Palermo to try to make sense of this mystery. Evie moves into Noah’s apartment to try to better understand his life. While Noah Glass is the centre of this novel, the journeys of understanding taken by Martin and Evie are also important. In looking back over their relationships with Noah, they each need to find their own place in the world.

This novel is part mystery, part romance, partly about the relationships between parents and children and totally engrossing. The story is non-linear, as is our understanding. To return to the beginning – the novel opens with a story about a cross-country skier whose body is uncovered in a thaw, decades after his death. His two sons, in their late seventies, see the body of their forty-two-year-old father. The reader gains similar glimpses of Noah’s life, as do Martin and Evie.

What more can I tell you about this novel? As I read it, I was torn between reading quickly (to try to find the answers) and reading slowly (to savour the writing). I admire the way in which Ms Jones uses the thoughts of the characters to convey so much information to the reader. This works well because the characters are so well developed. This is a novel that I will reread at some stage. Knowing how it ends is only the beginning.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Karen Downes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pompous, tedious, dull, pretentious. Two stars, because I didn't hate it and actually finished it.
This was next on my list of 2019 Miles Franklin Shortlist books, but is easily my least liked of the whole 2018 shortlist and 2019 so far.

Several issues with the story itself:
- Evie lives in a flat in East St Kilda, works part-time in a bookshop, and told her boss she was "having a few weeks off". Sure. Whatever. HIGHLY UNLIKELY.
- Martin's grief is completely unconvincing - he just seems selfish and self-absorbed (like his father), and his apparent conviction that he needs to "solve his father's mystery" just doesn't ring true.
- Martin visits Dora for the first time, in her flat. She doesn't immediately present the answers he wants, so he feels it is "a wasted visit". Please! He has been wandering around Palermo for a week, floating about and wasting time, and he's not even sure exactly what he's looking for, so spare me the tortured dramatics.
- Sydney and Melbourne are so small and provincial in this book, especially when contrasted with the expansive descriptions of Palermo (both in Noah's and Martin's time there)
- These people don't have jobs, but also seemingly have plenty of money and never have to worry about bills or actual adult-life-things
- NONE OF THESE PEOPLE HAVE FRIENDS!!!
- Noah and Martin are shallow and self-absorbed, masquerading as clever and interesting. Straining to lift themselves out of Australian ordinariness, into the exotic and esoteric - a bit like this novel.

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The grief and loss Jones summons here is so palpable, visceral and beautiful that it feels as though it has to have come from lived experience. I’ve read a lot of #auslit about grief and art, but here the writing was good enough to elevate. She captures Sydney and Palermo (Sicily), and to a lesser extent Melbourne, perfectly. I love Gail Jones’ writing and there was a lot here to really sink into. This is how to write about grief and Jones gathered feelings, memories, ideas in me that I didn’t realise I felt, remembered, thought.

[Laura Tee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring. Self-indulgent. Pretentious.
Martin is the worst. I couldn't care less about what happened to him. I am the only member of our book club who bothered to struggle through and finish this.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Gail Jones writing and have a huge amount of respect for her views and breadth of knowledge. This is a great example of her writing and a really great story but not reached the heights of my favourite of hers.
I do suspect I'll be thinking of aspects of the story for a while and I may go back to it just to enjoy the perceptive writing at some stage.
She really does deserve a wider audience for her work.
Must go and read some of her back list that I haven't got to yet.
That completes my reading of the 2019 Miles Franklin long-list. I don't think this one will make the short-list but I'm glad it was added to the long-list. One of my all time favourite writers.

[Angela Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Please note that an edited version of this review appears in Books+Publishing and is quoted by the publisher Text Publishing in their entry also. Full review below.


In her seventh novel, The Death of Noah Glass, acclaimed Australian author Gail Jones returns to familiar territory with a narrative grounded in a strong sense of place and character. Esteemed art historian Noah Glass has been found dead at his Sydney apartment building, and his children are devastated by the loss. Martin, a successful artist in his own right, rehabilitated drug addict and divorced father is also based in Sydney. Evie, Noah's younger daughter, is intellectually gifted and a savant who can memorise long lists of peculiar knowledge but has abandoned her academic studies and now drifts aimlessly through her life in Melbourne. Thrown together again in grief for their father, the siblings soon rekindle the close but complex relationship they once shared. But when a Sydney detective and the Italian carabinieri bring accusations of art theft against their father to the siblings, they are forced to face the possibility that they did not know their father as well as they might have liked. As in previous novels, Jones uses a cultural medium through which her characters know and express themselves with one another, in this case art and its history. The novel is rich in historical detail and thoroughly knowledgeable of its subject, as readers have come to expect from the Man Booker-nominated Jones. Told masterfully from the perspective of these three finely drawn characters, The Death of Noah Glass combines a thoroughly enjoyable escapade involving art theft, mafia conspiracy, romance and the possibility of a suspicious death with the depth of a very literary exploration of grief, identity and the power of the past to damage our lives in the present. Fans of Gail Jones will not be disappointed with this novel, and new readers should find much to recommend it as well.

[Hazel Edwards · Rating 2 out of 5]

Writing from varied viewpoints seems to be a current fashion, but here it was often confusing with the time jumps as to who was the father Noah and who was the son Martin and when things were happening. Maybe that was deliberate to indicate legacies and inheritances? The settings in Sicily were interesting as was the indigenous leper colony of Noah's youth, but generally the brother and sister and father were depressing characters. They existed rather than lived and seemed to have no purpose other than self-interest and lacked compassion for others. Each claimed an area of artistic skill but seemed to dabble. The sister/daughter Evie compiled alphabetical lists for distraction and to reduce anxiety but this led nowhere in terms of characterisation. Mainly they seemed to walk in either the rain of Sydney or Palermo. Minor characters were of more interest such as the blind employer, Maria the Palermo housekeeper and the deaf, grand- daughter who was the only responsive one. The vocabulary seemed strained for effect rather than the simplest word to convey a scene or feeling. The characters are emotionally crippled and I wanted to care about them, but frankly I didn't. Hints of symbolic events , such as the dead dog , but unsure how they added to the story. The supposed art theft is layered across Martin's meandering.Disappointing. However the writer's strength is in detailed description of places. Maybe that's the reason for the literary prizes listed on the blurb. Painterly words. And a genuine knowledge and enjoyment of art history.

[Caren · Rating 5 out of 5]

My expectations were high at the outset of this 7th novel by one of my favourite Australian authors. Though there was less poetry in her fluid writing of this highly engaging narrative, there were the meticulous descriptions of time and place that I find enthralling in her work. She delves within the inner thoughts of her 3 complex characters (art historian Noah Glass + his two emotionally burdened adult children), as well as presenting the unfolding of an art theft. While the reader is drawn by the underlying"who dunnit", the focus of this story is a contemplation of grief and one's search for contentment. The references to religious ritual and associated artifacts and to Art are dazzling in their intensity. It is an intelligent and philosophical novel, beautifully written.

[Gretchen Bernet-Ward · Rating 2 out of 5]

Call me an unsophisticated pleb but I could not read this book. If his son Martin and daughter Evie are anything to go by, Noah Glass got what he deserved. I didn't finish this self-absorbed, unnecessarily verbose story so I will never know. Do I care? No. If you don't believe me, read chapter 3 and Martin droning on about the cyanometer, the variants of blue and the cerulean sky. Sounds pretty but it's dead boring. And I can only take so much of a character's continual self-analysis and plot avoidance before I reach for another book.

[Story · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I so enjoyed this story with its stunning prose, beautiful and dreamy imagery and deeply touching story of three grief-stricken lost souls looking for meaning through love and art. While the plot sagged a bit in the middle for me, overall this was an enchanting read and I highly recommend it to lovers of literary fiction.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read and review this novel.

[Pam Tickner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt I should like this book due to Gail Jones' reputation as a writer, but I failed to engage with the story or the characters. It had interesting quirky parts- especially Noah's early days living in a leper colony, but that wasn't enough to keep me fully engaged in the story.

[Robert Lukins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Elegant prose, compelling characters. I'm at the beginning of a Jones binge.

[Tamene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gail Jones is a genius. I absolutely loved Five Bells and I didn’t think she would or could match it but she has. Her writing is melodic and poetic yet never ever somnolent. There is energy and spirit and deep reflection. The beauty in her phrasing is high literary and yet never feels contrived. In descriptions, she captures humanity’s profound mundaneness amid deep tragedy and loss.

She changed the pace of my reading. I read and reread lines describing the everyday: After a funeral - ‘Outside, the sun was the acrylic gold of crematorium curtains, and the city hummed with irrepressible life.’

And an Aussie in London: ‘He imagined England the magnificent exemplar of all cultural aspiration, and under this gorgeous miscalculation aimed his life there...he found the monotone streets oppressive, the chubby blokes in the pubs boorish, the dingy bedsit that he rented a temptation to despair. The cold spiralled inside him like a virus unwinding...’

Just lovely.

[Lisa Bowyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed it - very well written - liked the locations - would like to read more from Gail 😀

[Alison Hardtmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Noah Glass's two adult children are still making funeral plans and coming to terms with the sudden death of their father, the police arrive to let them know that he is suspected of having stolen an Italian statue. Noah Glass was an art historian and he had recently been in Palermo, but his area of expertise was far removed from the relatively recent sculpture and his personal views made such an accusation unthinkable to his children. Evie, who has traveled to Sydney from her home in Melbourne and is staying in her father's apartment, isn't interested in the subject, but Martin, a divorced father and artist, can't get it out of his mind. So he goes to Palermo, determined to find answers.

This novel takes each of the three characters, Noah, Evie and Martin, and spends alternating chapters with each of them as they are pulled into environments that challenge and stretch them, even as they come to terms with the past. This is a quiet, but gorgeously told story of family. Gail Jones's writing here reminded me of Anne Tyler's best work, with its tight focus on family ties and reliance on good writing and complex and nuanced characters to tell the story.