Lucida Intervalla

by John Kinsella

A lucida intervalla is a Latin phrase describing one of those startling “lucid intervals” experienced by the insane. Lucida Intervalla, as imagined by John Kinsella―the Australian poet and novelist―is an art journalist, artist, and social media sensation whose brilliant presence beguiles every one around her. Set in a post-apocalyptic world scarcely distinguishable from our own, Kinsella’s new novel follows her exploits and thoughts about art, political protest, eternity, and the absolute. At once a bildungsroman and a novel of ideas whose prose echoes everything from Thomas Browne to Twitter, Lucida Intervalla may well be Kinsella’s masterpiece.

175 pages, Paperback

First published October 26, 2018

About the author

John Kinsella is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry. The recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award, he has taught at Cambridge University and Kenyon College. He lives in Western Australia.

Reviews

[Jeremy Blank · Rating 4 out of 5]

The experimentation in writing style where poetic elements mixed with narration was interesting. The sentence lengths and a handful of what may or may not have been intentional spelling errors (waste rather than waist) and several similar examples were off-putting, especially where some sentences were a single word, but it kept me alert. I appreciate the author is playing with language and the book references a historical text from 1679.

The central character’s identity is a tease throughout the novel and is as frustrating as it is intriguing. The backdrop of Perth and Western Australia as historical and contemporary scenes was engaging. It is not an easy read, but then should reading a book be easy? The dialogues across artistic practice are very welcome. Included examples and references provide some interesting observations on the current rise of awareness and interest in performance as an art form. That particular aspect could have been further developed where the writer alludes to online influence and the range of performative actions could have been better expressed. That could be remedied if this book was made into a film, which I believe it should be as it is cinematic in its shifts from location to location and through time.

I liked this book a lot as it is problematic rather than simplistic. The use of language was enjoyable in the broadest sense and without spoiling the tale its core focus explores in depth notions of human identity and gender identification from a creative perspective.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kinsella is one of my favourite Australian poets and I find his prose consistently interesting but without loving it in quite the same way. In this novel he's playing around with the art world and the media presentation of it in a nominally dystopian Australian setting that doesn't get developed in much detail. It's worth a look for Kinsella fans but I definitely preferred his recent poetry book with Charmaine Papertalk Green.

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got ten pages in and ditched it. Pure word salad.