An acid-sharp novella of longing and language, in which the past comes up hard against the present, from Jonathan Gibbs, acclaimed author of Randall, or The Painted Grape (Galley Beggar, 2014):
It was not the only painting in the room, but it was the one that drew the eye. It was a Golden Age interior, the like of which you might see a dozen times in the Rijksmuseum, Jenny guessed, and once or twice in any gallery in Europe or America with a half-decent collection. Simple, domestic: a woman and a man in a room, the striking yellow and black tiled floor spread in expanding diamonds towards the viewer. There were paintings on the walls of the room in the painting, and a mirror on the left wall, tilted, that reflected the tiles, in a masterful flourish of perspective
When Jenny Thursley, a 40-year old linguistics lecturer, returns to Europe for a conference in Amsterdam, she finds herself pitched back into the presence of a life she had fled: a once-inspirational mentor now dying, a former lover again within reach, the flickerings of new desire. Over little more than twenty-four hours Jenny must write a keynote conferene speech, face up to her own mortality, and to the consequences of the bad choices she has made while finding the nerve to make new choices that might be no better. Witty, sexy and provocative, The Large Door is a meditation on life and living, and on ages golden and otherwise that recalls the sparkling mid-century work of writers such as Muriel Spark and Brigid Brophy.
