Port Mungo

Christopher Benfey

At the end of this immensely clever and tautly composed novel, the admiring reader may be left with a corresponding shadow of a doubt. Is Port Mungo a seriously meant meditation on the shadowy wellsprings of art and love, its carefully contrasted characters embodying the fraught polarities of this radioactive field? Or is it, rather, a cunningly contrived device of smoke and mirrors, with secrets passing for mysteries, and gothic conventions -- doubles, ghosts and family curses (the ''curse of the Rathbones'' is invoked for good measure) -- smuggled in for added frissons? Well, as Eduardo might say, that's art. For what is art, finally, if not a contrivance in which one is gradually brought to believe?
— The New York Times

The New Yorker

McGrath’s latest foray into macabre psychology examines one obsessive relationship through the lens of another. The novel is narrated by Gin Rathbone, who has lived her life in thrall to her younger brother, Jack, a famous painter now ailing and in her care. She tells the story of their eccentric, motherless childhood in England, a period that ends when Jack falls for a magnetic, promiscuous older artist named Vera Savage. Jack settles with Vera first in New York, then in the ramshackle Central American river town of the title. Gin’s account of their extravagantly tempestuous life is full of adulation of him and hatred of Vera, whom she blames for his misfortunes. However, a series of shocking dénouements show us the extent of Gin’s delusions about her brother and, in McGrath’s virtuosic handling, make for a compelling piece of family Gothic.

Publishers Weekly

The psychologically suspenseful story of Jack Rathbone, a "latter-day Gauguin" who flees his native England to pursue a career as a painter as well as a volatile relationship with artist Vera Savage, is narrated by his sister, Gin, whose obvious devotion skews her perspective. McGrath's sixth novel unfolds in a series of flashbacks, from Jack's childhood in England to Greenwich Village in the 1950s and, eventually, to the Honduran town of Port Mungo, where Jack develops a style he calls "tropicalism" or, more sinisterly, "malarial." The birth of daughter Peg threatens the marriage, and her mysterious death, at 16, dooms it; Jack moves in with his sister in New York. Ostensibly, the search for the truth behind Peg's death propels the narrative, but the mix of flashbacks and present action is confusing, and Gin's role feels trumped up. The book becomes even more baroque when Jack's second daughter, raised in England, moves to New York and agrees to let her father paint her, in the nude. It's a provocative conceit, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Despite McGrath's intelligent, lyrical prose, the story lacks the urgency of his earlier work. Agent, Amanda Urban. (June) Forecast: McGrath should please fans with this return to gothic suspense after his historical novel Martha Peake, but it's unlikely this will be a breakout novel. 60,000 first printing; six-city author tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Gin worships her big brother, artist Jack, but he's off to Port Mungo with brilliant but unpredictable fellow painter Vera Savage. With a five-city author tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The life of a painter haunted by the death of his daughter, as related by his admiring sister: McGrath's latest is more contemplative than such turbulent tales as Asylum (1997). Gin Rathbone has always been in thrall to her younger brother Jack. Does this make her an unreliable narrator? Let's say partially reliable, at best. In 1957, dynamic Jack and quiet Gin are art students in London when 17-year-old Jack meets Vera Savage, at 30 an established artist. There's a whirlwind romance, Jack detaches Vera from her terrible husband, and they leave for New York, two madly impulsive bohemians. But young Jack is a stronger character than the slutty, alcoholic, self-destructive Vera. Gin is miserable at Jack's departure, seeing Vera as her rival-her own suitors never measure up to Jack, whom she loves for his narcissism (the Narcissus myth figures in Jack's work). The story moves back and forth through five decades, and, in time, Gin, inheriting the family fortune, will make New York her home. But Jack and Vera have moved on, first to Havana and then to Port Mungo, a seedy coastal town on the Gulf of Honduras, where Jack will settle for some 20 years, at work on paintings he calls "tropicalist," though they're all about him and his anger. Meanwhile, Vera drinks, takes lovers, and periodically disappears. By chance, Vera will bear Jack a daughter (Peg) and much later another (Anna). She's not maternal, Jack is negligent, and Peg fends for herself. At 16-it stands at the heart of the novel-the girl is found dead in the mangrove swamps. Jack's account incriminates a drunken Vera, while a different version points to incest and suicide, prompting an older brother to come from England to rescue littleAnna. Years later, Anna will show up in New York to root out the truth, though the outcome will be another death, equally mysterious. Dark brooding over dusty secrets in what's far from McGrath's best. First printing of 60,000