The Museum Guard [Hardcover]

Howard Norman (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 310 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus And Giroux; 1ST edition (1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0676971725
• ISBN-13: 978-0676971729
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)

More About the Author

HOWARD NORMAN is a three-time winner of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a winner of the Lannan Award for fiction. His 1987 novel, The Northern Lights, was nominated for a National Book Award, as was his 1994 novel The Bird Artist. He is also author of the novels The Museum Guard, The Haunting of L, and Devotion. His books have been translated into twelve languages. Norman teaches in the MFA program at the University of Maryland. He lives in Washington, D.C., and Vermont with his wife and daughter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tragic confusion of art and life, December 13, 1998

By 

Rick Hunter (Malone, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Museum Guard (Hardcover)

Howard Norman's The Museum Guard tells the relationship between DeFoe, a young museum guard in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Imogen, keeper of the Jewish cemetery who first becomes enraptured by and then literally becomes Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam, the subject of a painting on exhibit. As with Norman's earlier The Bird Artist, this is very much a novel of place and character. Particular to this novel, however, is its setting in history - 1938, a time of Nazi fanaticism and anti-Semitism. It is this context which makes Imogen's "madness" particularly horrifying, because in "becoming" the Jewess in the painting she travels to Amsterdam when Nazi overrun appeared imminent. Norman manages to write a novel that is both shocking and humorous, wise and witty. His use of language, also, is a marvel.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars living inside art, January 22, 2000

By 

Kimberly Rhodes - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Museum Guard: A Novel (Paperback)

How many times have you encountered a painting that you wanted to inhabit? Howard Norman portrays the dark side of this fantasy in this reticent novel that interweaves art, World War II history and psychology through the eyes of a guard at a provincial Canadian art museum. Although it is difficult to identify or sympathize with the characters in this novel, the author's unusual choice of narrator (most novelists seem to choose artists or art historians as protagonists in their works about art--to place a museum guard at the center is to champion the periphery), questioning of the hows and whys of human connections with art, insistence on the ways that art exists within rather than outside of history and great intelligence make this a provocative and worthy read.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lean, Stark Prose but an Inconsistent Plot, August 7, 2000

By 

J. Mullin (Plantation, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Museum Guard: A Novel (Paperback)

I like the writing style of Howard Norman, whose lean, understated prose made The Bird Artist a unique and noteworthy novel. He has struck again in The Museum Guard, and for fans of his earlier work there will be plenty here to like as well. Narrator DeFoe Russet is a museum guard in Halifax, where he lives in a hotel with his Uncle Edward after his parents' death in a zeppelin accident. The narrator's depiction of that tragic incident, and especially the memory of the young narrator as he sat ironing shirts with his uncle's girlfriend to pass the time until his family returned, was a truly memorable and striking scene. DeFoe is painfully serious in his work as a guard at the local art museum, and his wry observations about the new exhibits at the museum, as well as his keen observation of the people who come to marvel at the paintings, suits Norman's understated narrative style well.

At its heart the novel is a love story betweem DeFoe and Imogen, caretaker of a local Jewish cemetery, who gradually develops an odd, mystical attachment to one of the paintings in the museum depicting a "Jewess on the Street in Amsterdam". At this point, in my opinion, the novel starts to take some turns that felt contrived and awkward. Why does Uncle Edward take a sudden interest in Imogen for example?

In any event, Norman has perfected a narrative style that is akin to a whisper, which as we all know is the best way to get attention right? I enjoyed reading the book, because I truly am a fan of Norman's unique style, but upon finishing the book I thought the whole thing got a little silly and out of Norman's control.