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The Painter of Battles

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The Painter of Battles reads like a treatise on war and art; the two are evenly matched in this novel, but each in a way puts a fingertip down on the tension of the story, rendering it incapable of the taut hum that Pérez-Reverte's books have sung with in the past. The cover blurb and snippet of dialogue, along with my love for another of the author's books, compelled me to pick this one up, but after wading through what felt like at the time a heavy-handed first chapter, I wasn't hooked. No, that came later, but still my interest ebbed and rushed like the water against Andrés Faulques' tower.

There is no doubt that The Painter of Battles is a strong and sad novel with plenty to say about the intensity of war and the elusive quality of life, how art struggles to capture something so fleeting. It was only after I read each chapter that I truly appreciated what was being said, that an image would startle me, or a theory prompt me to consider how limited my view is of the very small piece of world I reside in. And it was only after finishing it that the story and tension seemed secondary to all that.

Whether you'll enjoy The Painter of Battles is entirely dependent on what you are looking to gain from it. If you want intrigue and fast-paced action, you won't find it here. If you want a considerable amount of introspection and don't mind sitting down to paragraphs that last for two pages or more, give it a try. In the end, all I can say is this: Take the time to let it settle and sift it through your thoughts, your own memories, photographs you've taken and ones you've seen, and only then decide what the novel meant to you.

Past readers of Arturo Perez-Reverte should be aware that this book is much different from his earlier work. The story follows what may be the last days of retired war photographer's life. Falques has secluded himself in a tower to paint a mural of past battles when he is interrupted by a ghost from his past, a past subject of one of his photographs. The man, Ivo Markovic explains that the photograph has tragically altered his life, leading to his incarceration and torture and the destruction of his family. Markovic further explains that he has studied and followed Falques and ultimately intends to kill him.

From this introduction, the book proceeds with Falques and Markovic retelling their stories of the wartime horrors they experienced and Falques painting and reflecting upon the nature of his oeuvre. Falques also remembers his time with his lover Olvido, whose dead body he photographed, said act being coincidentally witnessed by Markovic. It is the circumstances surrounding this photograph that most intrigues Markovic and drives the story to its eventual conclusion.

While the author writes very well, there is little to enjoy in this book. The main characters serve primarily to relay stories of wartime atrocity, cruelty and brutal violence. The recurrent theme is the evil and corruption of human nature with the subtext of the Olvido-Falques romance being the ephemerality of life. The ugliness at the core of this novel cannot be hidden, no matter how good the writing is. Further, there is no real progression to the plot. Markovic shows up, numerous stories are exchanged leading up to the story behind Olvido's death which heralds the ending of the novel. There is no real suspense because the Olvido's death is forecast early on as the climax of the novel. The primary emotion of the novel is best described as numbness, seen in Falques self-medication and Markovic's fixation, and it extends to the reader as well.

Overall, readers of the author's past work should not go into this expecting another Club Dumas or Fencing Master. This is a far more serious and personal work( the author was a war journalist for many years) that is numbing in its violence and emotional disconnect. It is effective at being unsettling, perhaps intentionally so, but it fails in entertaining, again perhaps intentionally so.

The Painter of Battles is a beautifully written word picture encompassing everything from "the Butterfly effect", to art history lessons, to a morality homily on the futility of war and the evil that man bestows on his fellow man.

Perez-Reverte draws you into the story as he meticulously recounts (probably from his own experiences as a war journalist) example after example of the insanity of war and examines the cruelty and finality of its outcome. In essence, Perez-Reverte gives us and in depth look at the nature of man who he perceives as possessing an in-born inescapable evil that he has, utilizing his superior intelligence, refined through the centurys into an art form.

This story of two men, inescapably linked by a war, a chance encounter and a photograph, and the culmination of those events is mezmerizing. As the story progresses, their relationship becomes almost symbiotic in nature.

This is definitely not your "run of the mill" novel and Perez-Reverte is not your run of the mill writer. His fluent prose and evocative observations will fill your mind and soul like a fine dinner satisfies your hunger. Perez-Reverte has created his own "Butterfly Effect". By writing this book, he has effected the perception of his readers.

The basic plot line is simple: a former war photographer [Faulques]who has retired to paint is interrupted by a stranger who announces that he is going to kill (eventually) the painter. So of course the obvious question is "why?" and you think the book will revolve around this question. But then you have another question: "Why not kill the painter right away?" and as the intended killer and painter talk, you learn more. Then you also need to answer the seemingly lesser questions "Why did Faulques give up photography for painting?" and "What happened with Faulques and his girlfriend Olvido?"

Perez-Reverte has written some fine novels, ranging from 3 stars to 5 stars. The first and best, The Flanders Panel, was breathtakingly creative and original. His other works have been good, but not as groundbreaking as Flanders Panel with its retrograde chess analysis. It seems to be a characteristic of the author that is true in both Flanders Panel and Painter of Battles that what seems at first as perhaps a straightforward "Why?" soon starts producing more questions than answers. Both of these novels are like Russian Kachinka dolls: opening one doll reveals another doll inside. So the first simple "Why" mentioned above turns out to be far from simple.

There is much here that is dark and disturbing. Faulques was a war photographer, but if you think that this means the kind of thing you see on the evening news, you're very wrong indeed. There is some of that, to be sure, but consider instead Eddie Adams' photograph of the Saigon street execution of a Viet Cong in 1968. Faulques takes photos of prisoners who are bound and left on the riverbank for crocodiles, photos of a sniper killing women and children, photos of men with burning tires around their necks. There's something here that goes into dark places far beyond what we consider "war". What you thought was going to be a nice mystery becomes, in ways, a descent into Dante's Inferno.

So in a way, Painter of Battles is a bit like Hjortsberg's Falling Angel (made into the movie Angel Heart), and certainly like Flanders Panel: the novel takes you in unexpected directions, and does so very effectively. If you like predictability in novels, there's plenty of trash available: this is the wrong book for you. If you want something different and original, then you'll enjoy Painter of Battles.

A side note: Perez-Reverte has written some other books--particularly Cabo Trafalgar--which need to be translated into English and published.

Faulques was an award-winning war photographer. Now he pursues a lonely existence, in an abandoned watch-tower on the Spanish coast. He is painting a mural on the inside walls of the tower, a mural that will encompass (and make sense of) all the horrors of war he has witnessed. Ivo Markovic was a Croatian soldier, whose war-worn face became one of Faulques' award-winning photographs. The photograph had a horrible unforeseen effect on the young soldier's life. Olvido Ferrara was Faulques' lover, for an all too short time, before her horrible dearh.

Now old and obviously ill, Faulques is trying to make sense of all that he has winessed, by painting it, when Markovic comes to visit. Comes, he tells Faulques, to kill him. But before he does, they engage in long conversations, study the painting (which will never be finished), meditate on the darkness and cruelty of the universe, reminisce and philosophize.

The novel doesn't have a plot in the usual sense. It is an extended meditation on war, death, loss, cruelty and suffering. Cruelty, the old artist begins to understand, is not an aberration but the very nature of nature, part of a terrible symmetry, a balance. Author Perez-Reverte draws upon his knowledge of photography, painting, great artists, great writers, and chaos theory, to create his own verbal painting even as the painter of battles paints his mural.

The book shouldn't work, but it does. I found myself riveted--even if I couldn't follow everything--even if I don't know that much about techniques of painting and photography, colors, light and shadow. The work is compelling, brilliant, horrifying and yet dazzling. If you're looking for a light, escapist read, this is not the book for you. If you enjoy literary fiction that will make you think (even suffer), then I recommend the Painter of Battles highly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

Arturo Pérez-Reverte paints a dark picture of how an artist's war experience effects how the creative image distorts reality for his novel, THE PAINTER OF BATTLES: A NOVEL. The story centers on the main character, Andrés Faulques, a war photographer, and who is referred to as the "painter of battles" who has now taken up painting as a way to express the ravages of war that he has personally experienced as well as the history of war that has been depicted for twenty-six centuries through a painting or photograph. While Faulques is busily painting a mural, he is confronted with his past, which revolves around fellow photographer and lover, Olvido Ferrera, and a visit from a stranger, Ivo Markovic, with whom he shares long conversations with about the images he has captured in his photographs.

This is a complex story that is cleverly written with much artistry and allegory. Although the book is not considered a suspense novel, there are elements within the contents of the book that portray subtle tints of suspense. The conversations between Faulques and Markovic examine the human condition as it relates to the war experience of the late twentieth century wars in Eastern Europe, Africa, Central America, and Asia, which the camera has captured and frozen in time. The dialogue between these characters may have the reader reeling with questions about a historical event, and how the photograph of that event lends itself to different interpretations; the photograph may be deceptive to reality. While reading Pérez-Reverte's story, Susan Sontag's book, ON PHOTOGRAPHY, comes to mind in terms of the unreality of a photographic image may convey, and how one interprets its meaning or significance to one's life.

THE PAINTER OF BATTLES is an extremely graphic novel that shows the intricacies of the war experience. Pérez-Reverte succeeds in bringing the story and characters alive, but it may take more than one read to understand the complexity that is involved. The book falls within the same lines as an Ernest Hemingway novel, and is recommended reading for those who have an interest in the genre of war literature.

Arturo Perez-Reverte could be Spain's answer to our pop culture writers but with his literary insight and background, he (pardon the pun)paints on a much smaller canvas with more telling and revealing results. His latest novel is no exception to his string of exceptional novels except this one takes us into the recent past; Andres Faulques made his fame as a war photographer. The horrors he has witnessed and documented have takent heir toll however and now he is semi-retired, reclusive and withdrawn from the world that battered him with its graphic and horrofic images. Instead, he finds peace in painting and drawing but war hasn't left his mind; his latest project involes a mural with images drawn from great war paintings throughout history and even some of his own dark photographic documents.

When one of the subjects of his photo shows up at his doorstep telling the photographer that he is going to kill him for being featured in one of Faulques' famous photos.

Perez-Reverte delivers a novel that masquerades as pulp entertainment but has much more at its core than body bags and action sequences. Certainly the premise itself would make for a fascinating but simple thriller but Perez-Reverte adds another layer to it just as his painter in the story continually adds another layer to his mural;it's through this layering process that Perez-Reverte's novel becomes richer filled with glimpses into the characters but more importantly how they became who they are.

The marvelous translation by Margaret Sayers Peden makes this slim but compelling volume (it is only 224 pages long)a marvelous, involving and breezy read. She helps bring Perez-Reverte's prose to life in English.

Highly recommended.

This elegant exploration of art's relationship to war takes place mostly within a tower where a former war photographer, Falques, is consumed with painting what his camera could never capture: the history of human atrocities. When a former Croatian soldier shows up at his door and announces that he plans to kill Falques, the photographer must face his own complicity in the wars he documented. In flashbacks, Falques reveals his passion for Olvida, a model turned photographer whose wise observations color much of what Falques now thinks, as well as the moments that drove him to become obsessed with his painting.

The suspense of whether the Croatian will murder Falques, and, less centrally, of why Falques suffers, both physically and emotionally, is secondary to Perez-Reverte's intellectual fascination with man's inhumanity to man, accountability, and the nature of art. Although each character rises out of a specific and interesting past, they often seem more conceptual--foils for the philosophical premise--than realistic. For example, Falques reacts to the news that the Croatian soldier will kill him with little more than curiosity; instead of acting to defend his life, he engages his would-be killer in philosophical discussions. Likewise, the soldier, who arrives to settle an extremely personal debt, does not attack Falques out of passion but instead bides his time, asking questions about the huge mural and Falques's life. The result of this discourse is quotable - every page contains at least one line, usually more, than could prompt an entire essay - but often without believable actions.

Perez-Reverte writes in a highly visual, precisely imagined style that makes many of the novel's scenes unforgettable. The density of the ideas and descriptions make this short book seem longer than it is; most readers will not be able to tear through it the way one would expect of a "literary thriller," as the jacket refers to the author's writing. Because there is much to commend here, I recommend it, with reservations, for those who like international and/or intellectual literary fiction. Those who expect a page-turner, with complex plot twists, would be best served by looking elsewhere. - Debbie Lee Wesselmann

This is not, as listed, a thriller/mystery. Perez-Reverte was once one of my favorite authors when, earlier in his career, he wrote cerebral mysteries on extremely interesting subjects. The Battle Painter is an anti-war account (and sometimes rant) by a retired war photographer who meets a former soldier and POW who can relate to his war experiences.

The setting is the former war photographer (the Painter of Battles) has retired to live in a tower in Spain. He is painting a mural of war atrocities on the curving wall of the interior. While there, he is visited by the subject of one of his photographs who calmly asserts that he will kill the painter.

This is a rare book in that it can be broken down into several distinct parts. The author switches among these topics throughout: philosophizing about war by the two men (tedious); an account of the painter's brief love affair (at times good); descriptions of the horrors of war as photographed (very good); and, descriptions and references to paintings (too esoteric unless the reader really knows art).

The descriptive passages are wonderful. The portrayals of the scenes and events leading up to photographs taken in war are vivid and gripping. They are, by far, the best part of the book.

The writing takes some getting used to. Sentences can be extremely long with dependent clauses taking the places of adjectives. Often, it was necessary to go back and start over to be able to maintain all the thoughts in a sentence.

For those who, like me, pine for this author's early terrific mysteries, this will be a great disappointment. There are the great descriptions in this book, but there is no plot per se, only memoir-type recollections with philosophy interspersed. This is a fine account of the ravages and horrors of war told, at times, somewhat heavy-handedly.

R.D. Laing

Andres Faulques spent thirty years as a photographer capturing instances of mans inhumanity to man. Whether in Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda, or Lebanon, Faulques' photos brought the face of war into our homes and at the same time made Falques famous. We've all seen photos of this sort: the burning baby running down the road in the Vietnamese village of Trang Bang; or Robert Capa's iconic Spanish Civil War photo "Moment of Death" Robert Capa - 36. Arturo Perez-Reverte's "The Painter of Battles" captures the alienation achieved by outrageous violence. What marks "Painter of Battles" as unique is the fact that Perez-Reverte does not just focus on the alienation of the victims of violence but on the `neutral' bystander who does no more than report events. Painter of Battles tells a provocative story and tells it very well.

The plot is simple. Falques has retired from photography and pretty much withdrawn from the world. Falques has purchased an abandoned watchtower on the Spanish coast. Ill with some unstated ailment Falques spends his days and most of his nights turning the interior of his watchtower into a panoramic painting of war through the ages. His life is spent mostly in isolation until one day a visitor appears, informs Falques he was the subject of one of Falques' famous photos and that he has come to kill him. The observer, Ivo Markovic was a young Croatian soldier caught in the maelstrom of the breakup of Yugoslavia. The photo changed Markovic's life and not for the better. The rest of the book consists of a series of conversations between the photographer and his subject. Slowly, but inexorably, the lives of the photographer and his subject are revealed. The layers of each man's life, particularly Falques', are peeled away until we are presented with a stunning and (to me) surprising revelation that made the resolution seem absolutely fitting.

Perez-Reverte has done a marvelous job here. I think almost all of us have looked at some of the photos and videos we see that depict acts of unspeakable violence and ask how the photographer can simply point, shoot and then walk away. In the hands of Perez-Reverte we get what appears to be a very troubled answer. Perez-Reverte's characterization of Markovic is equally compelling.

"The Painter of Battles" is a grim portrait of two lives. It is somber but thought-provoking. It is well worth reading. L. Fleisig