The Museum Guard: A Novel [Paperback]

Howard Norman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 24, 1999

Orphaned by a zeppelin crash at age nine, DeFoe Russet was raised in a Halifax, Nova Scotia, hotel by his magnetic uncle Edward. Now thirty, DeFoe works with Edward as a guard in Halifax's three-room Glace Museum. He and his uncle disturb the silence of the museum with heated conversations that prove them to be "opposites at life." Away from the museum, DeFoe courts the affection of Imogen Linny, the young caretaker of the small Jewish cemetery. Everything changes when Imogen, inspired by the arrival of a painting, Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam, abandons Halifax for the ennobled life she imagines for the painting's subject—even amid the growing perilousness of being a Jew in Amsterdam. Set against the impending events of World War II, The Museum Guard, the second book of his Canadian trilogy, explores the mysteries of identity and self-determination, and the desire to step out of the ordinary into an alluring and dangerous sphere of action.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On September 5, 1938, DeFoe Russet helps hang a new show at a tiny Nova Scotia museum. He doesn't even pay much attention to the eight new paintings from Holland; he'll have time enough to take them in later on. After all, the buttoned-down 25-year-old is one of two people at Halifax's Glace Museum paid to watch out for the art, to stop people from getting too close to it. But DeFoe also knows that "as a guard you had emotions. You got to know paintings better than you got to know the people in your life. Speaking for myself."

The other guard--and the man who raised him after his parents died in a zeppelin crash when he was 9--is his Uncle Edward. Edward is certainly not the steadiest fellow employee or familial influence. He devotes his nights to drinking, poker, and charming women at the Lord Nelson, the hotel where both men live, and his days to hangovers, somnolence, and generally harassing museumgoers. DeFoe, at least, is a model employee. Yet his personal life cannot be quite so regulated, and for the last two years he has been frustrated in his relationship with a caretaker at the local Jewish cemetery. He seems to expend most of his energy anticipating Imogen Linny's moods, assessing the power of her headaches, and banging his head against her nocturnal mixed messages and philosophizing. As the novel progresses, Imogen also grows increasingly obsessed with one of the newly arrived paintings, Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam.

Soon, DeFoe puts his career in jeopardy for Imogen, stealing the picture for her--though this is only one of the mysteries at the heart of Howard Norman's strange and startling third novel, The Museum Guard. Through DeFoe's eyes, we, too, begin to understand the allure of the painting, in which a woman pushes a bicycle and holds a loaf of bread, the shop window behind her filled with toothbrushes. "The toothbrushes made me laugh. They quickly put me in a good mood," he recounts. "But then I looked close up at the Jewess's face; I was sunk from that mood in a second. Because it struck me as a face of desperate sadness. Those are my own words. I stood as close to the painting as I could without touching it. Me--a guard. I reached out then and touched the woman's face. And I did not flinch back my hand or warn myself."

Howard Norman's protagonist would probably be able to pull himself back; this is a man who calms himself down by ironing endless white shirts. And he fully intends to keep the same job for the next 30 years. But those around him lack his instinct for order and seem to be pushing him toward the grand, self-destructive gesture. News of Hitler's advances on Europe also make him realize "how small Halifax had become." Imogen, too, feels her life a confinement, but her reaction is more extreme. She literally wills herself to become the woman in the painting. In one bizarre scene--and Norman has a knack for turning the extreme into the everyday--DeFoe finds her filling in for the usual museum guide. Speaking in an unconvincing Dutch accent and dressed as the Jewess, Imogen tells a group of increasingly puzzled women her version of events. "While he painted me, we fell in love. Just weeks before, with my parents' death, I had become estranged from my very soul. My marriage to Joop Heijman helped me to reconcile. And now you know my deepest secrets." Edward's assessment is as wry as ever, and spot-on: "Life in Halifax used to be so simple, didn't it, DeFoe?"

As Imogen's identification grows, she is resolved to go to Amsterdam and "reunite" with the painter. Howard Norman writes with such persuasive oddity that it's no surprise when those closely allied to the Glace Museum find themselves moving this futile, intrusive, and dangerous plan along. The Museum Guard is an unsettling examination of a group of people (with very odd names) who let themselves get too close to art--and perhaps to life. --Kerry Fried --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The worlds of Norman's novels (The Northern Lights; The Bird Artist) are always slightly askew. Like trompe l'oeil paintings, they contain a veil of mystery spread over realistic settings. DeFoe Russet, like most of Norman's other protagonists, is a minimally educated man of simple ambitions, limited horizons and little self-knowledge. An orphan whose parents died in a dirigible crash when he was eight, DeFoe is raised in a Halifax hotel by his incorrigibly alcoholic and amorous Uncle Edward, a guard in the town's art museum. High-school dropout DeFoe becomes a guard there, too, and he goes stoically through his days caring for his perennially derelict and self-destructive uncle. DeFoe also tries to nourish his failing relationship with Imogen Linny, the caretaker at the Jewish cemetery, whose debilitating headaches have increased since she's become obsessed with a painting on loan to the museum. Imogen is convinced that she is the figure in the painting, titled Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam, and is determined to travel to that city to play out the drama of "her soul's estrangement and reconciliation." But the year is 1938 and Hitler is on the march. Norman again creates eccentric characters whose oddities seem quite natural to others in their community. But the antic charm and mordant humor of his earlier work is somewhat lacking here, and the reader is not so willing to suspend disbelief. Despite a histrionic denouement, the narrative feels muted, and Imogen, in particular, never earns our sympathy. Yet in the end, Norman's message about the disparity between the world of art, which can be captured and controlled, and the real world, with its emotional chaos and physical danger, carries a haunting intensity.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (September 24, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312204272
• ISBN-13: 978-0312204273
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #867,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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.