Conception

by Özgür Uyanık

Enter Anonymous, a middle-ranking artist rolling between minor shows in New York, London and Istanbul. With his career sliding into obscurity, shamefully forced to consider advertising work to make ends meet, he knows he must break new ground if he is to survive.

With his mother's encouragement, he decides upon his next work of art: an act of self-violation so outrageous, so horrific, the art world will be forced to take notice. But will it be enough to raise him to the ranks of the elite?

'Conception' is the journey of a sociopath who will do whatever it takes to get ahead; a dark comedy exploring who and what determines the value of art.

Genres: Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published May 7, 2020

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

An artist, also a sociopath, finds that his creative career is beginning to wane so he begins to brainstorm an idea that is sure to put his art career back on track.

Blurb: With his mother's encouragement, he decides upon his next work of art: an act of self-violation so outrageous, so horrific, the art world will be forced to take notice. But will it be enough to raise him to the ranks of the elite?

Oh my, what a plan our unnamed narrator has. That blurb alone was enough to reel me into this one because I just love odd stories and as strange as it may sound I also love being in the head of a sociopath, fictionally speaking. Our odd narrator definitely did not disappoint as I found myself giggling at some of his observations. However, he is a long-winded fellow who often went off on tangents that left me with my eyes glazed over. For a book at under 300 pages this seemed to take me a long time to read.

The writing is superb and I am glad to have read this but I'm not sure who I would comfortably recommend this to. If you're like me and you just have to know what this act of self-violation is then give it a try but if that thought alone makes your stomach turn then skip this one for sure! 3.5 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and Fairlight Books for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing debut, Ozgur's writing has so much energy, it really draws the reader into the macabre life of a sociopath and what a sociopath this character is!  We do not get told his name, you may think this odd but we are getting the story from his point of view and he has no real interest in what others are saying so any mention of his name is lost.  He is a horrible human being and you instantly hate him, but like all decent sociopaths you start to believe him, you create an attachment to him and start to care and then are left feeling foolish when he shows you his true colours.

The focus of the story is his big break through into the art world, you follow him as he plans this piece, he fully immerses himself into his art and this in turn reveals his insecurities and past traumas, explaining just why he is like he is.  The piece of art itself is part performance and this included some incredible writing, I was on the edge of my seat (most probably pulling a stupid grimace) absolutely mesmerised by the complete unravelling of the artist, he almost becomes a child again before your eyes.  Incredible stuff.

This book contains some of the most visual writing I've ever read, I finished the book and only then realised I had in my head the feeling that I'd watched a film.  I thoroughly enjoyed this and love the fact that you are left wondering whether this was fact or fiction. The cover is also something else, the use a black biro to block out the face really pulls you in, almost like a black hole.

Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2020...

[Mridula Gupta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bizarre is an understatement for Uyanik's latest novel, Conception. The narrator, a narcissist and sociopath makes observations with wry humour that is outrageously rude and obnoxious to the point where he comes out as insufferable and unreliable. He is an artist with shrewd opinions and is trying to keep himself afloat in a cut-throat environment. As he understands his need for attention and his growing ambition, he devises a gory, out of the world plan which will either take him to the stars or be the end of his career.

Uyanik doesn't name this protagonist, maybe because he wants to give us some kind of power over this self-pompous narrator who wants to control everything around him. He is witty with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue. His art is a manifestation of his broken family and part trauma that has a firm grip on his soul.

'Conception' is packed with an energy that in uncanny and can only be understood if you read the book in bite-size pieces. The sentences are long and thoughts are scattered all over the place. Our narrator, with his musings, doesn't make this an easy read. But his plan (the actual show stopper), that is what makes this a worthwhile read.

[Scarlet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just liked how the narrator was so full of himself and then his life ended up being pretty lame and he sucked. But it was funny to read something written as a pretentious artist.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

How far is one willing to go for art? Throughout history there have been some extreme examples ; Marina Abramović and Rhythm O, where she posed naked for six hours while people prodded her or Ron Athey, who would hurt himself. This aspect of art is examined in Özgür Uyanik’s Conception.

The unnamed narrator is a failing artist, who is thinking of entering the world of advertising. He is also the son of Turkish emigrants. His mother supports his art fully and thinks he is a genius, while his father wants him to get a proper office job. It is worth noting that the author’s parents are separated, with the father living in Turkey.

After a series of failures with his agent, the artist decides to come up with an art piece that will shock the world. Like all great ideas the artist spends time thinking about it, then prepares for it and pulls it off and it is quite unnerving. Obviously I’ll spoil the book if I talk about the great plan so I’ll leave it at that.

Conception is not only about the lengths one can through in order to make a statement. It’s also a book about identity. The main protagonist can neither relate to Britain of Turkey as his way of thinking creates clashes and misunderstandings. Although he calls London his home, it seems that in Turkey he has slightly more clout, really though it’s his mother, who the narrator gets along with. Family relations also play a big part. I have spoken about the main protagonist’s relationship with his mother and father but this stems from an incident which occurred when the artist was a newborn.

One could say that Conception is a character study. The main protagonist is a thoroughly unlikable character. He treats the people around him badly, is insensitive, self-centred and,although, erudite, uses his knowledge of the English language to show off. Could the roots of his personality lie in his identity problem and complicated relationships?

Conception is a complex novel, that disturbs and provokes. As a warning there are scenes of violence and abuse. If one can read that then this is a book that will definitely stay in the mind for a while.

[Eral Yilmaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laugh-out-loud funny send-up of the contemporary art world, told through the eyes of an anti-hero whose mummy and daddy issues would have psychotherapists squealing with delight (the following quote still amuses me, a week after finishing the book: "Father took little notice of me until I was, in his words 'old enough to have a conversation with' and that turned out to be when I was old enough to realise that he wasn't much of a conversationalist." I couldn't stop turning the pages, first in anticipation of, and then right through the grizzly denouement. I'd watch a film of it just for the locations and to see Mother purse her lips!

[Kimberly Ouwerkerk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Should he follow his calling or do something that pays the rent? Our main character doesn’t waver and fully pursues art to the pleasure of his mom who tells him to be hugely ambitious and the displeasure of his dad who tells him not to bother because he’ll never make it.

Conception deals with the question of what art is and what it means to be a person – artist – that pursues art. Where does ethics come in? With the main character, we explore Istanbul and London. He is stuck between two worlds and doesn’t fully belong to either east or west because he was taken from his place of birth (Turkey) and dropped in a foreign country (England) at a young age. He has a very sarcastic worldview that is not necessarily unrealistic.

You get to know the main character very well – both his strengths and flaws, despite not knowing his name. I like the train of thought leading to the moment of conception of his next artwork (the evil milk!). His thoughts are hilarious at times (in a morbid way), especially the analogies he comes up with, even though they are often quite offensive.

Özgür Uyanık uses a flowery language: if it can be said in many words, why use short sentences? The main character’s thoughts show his self-mockery and criticism, his sadism but also his ambition and spirit. At times it feels like a rant because nearly every single sentence contains a judgment of himself, other people, or historical events.

The writing style is not for everyone; the sentences are often long and demand your full attention if you want to follow the train of thought and understand the references. It is energy consuming, but also more rewarding as the fun is in the connections the main character makes in his mind.

Conception is a thought-provoking and interesting read. All along I was curious about the steps the main character would take next to realize his ambitions. I felt supportive of him, in a slightly disapproving way. He challenges society – both ethics and cultural norms – and shows great resilience and drive to bring his conception to life.

As for your thoughts on the book, to quote the main character: “Your mind will submit to the spectacle of my utter conviction that what I have produced demands nothing less than your unflinching gaze of admiration or, failing that, repulsion.”

Many thanks to Fairlight Books and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

[Mike Futcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

"When Duchamp signed a urinal and declared it to be art, it was a defining moment for the twentieth century and now, in the twenty-first century, I want a similar moment to be forever associated with my name." (pg. 127)

Focused as it is on narcissism, bodily functions and the pretentious milieu of contemporary conceptual art – a hard sell indeed, even with a great front cover – it is fortunate that Conception manages to just about hold your interest, because it rewards the attentive reader. Written by Özgür Uyanik, the book follows an unnamed artist who can be safely characterised as a self-satisfied sociopath (undiagnosed, I believe), who decides to perform a public act of self-mutilation as his next 'masterpiece'. The process is bold and horrifying enough to keep the reader morbidly fascinated, though it will certainly not be to everyone's tastes.

After reading it, I'm still not sure if it's even to my tastes: it's definitely outside my usual sort of thing. Conception is inspired in part by Nabokov's Lolita, an atypical read which I loved tackling, and certainly I enjoyed the parts of Conception which were similar, not least deciphering the unreliable narrator. However, the corpulent narrative voice of our unhinged artist, coloured by his mother's influence, is more analogous to A Confederacy of Dunces, and while many will enjoy similar layers being laced through Uyanik's story, I should point out that I hated Toole's famous work and did not enjoy the abundant echoes here. But Uyanik has a fair amount of humour and his sociopath has some interesting asides and observations, which makes his story more palatable than Dunces, if less ingenious.

Comparisons aside, there is plenty of worth to engage with in Conception but, to my mind, there is no anchor, and this makes for a restless reading experience. I kept waiting for the moment, the scene or the phrase that would unlock the story; the pivotal event that would allow me to see the method behind Conception's substantial madness. But the plot kept turning without it arriving – and with one too many tangential rants, however interesting they are at first – so by the end I was able to look back and see plenty of things that were interesting, but nothing so central that I could orient my understanding of the story around it. There were things that hinted at a caustically satirical comment on the contemporary art scene – "I am going to shit out my masterpiece" (pg. 133) – and things that hinted at the hidden turmoil of the main character (for example, a traumatic childhood circumcision that saw all his relatives "come to 'celebrate' the occasion afterwards" (pg. 106), mirroring his later artistic self-mutilation), but nothing so prominent and indisputable that it would raise Conception up to be the stellar piece of literature it occasionally threatens to be.

This lack of a prominent moment may in itself be intentional on Uyanik's part. His unreliable narrator speaks of how "creatives make strange and unsettling connections – creativity sits on the cusp of mental wellness after all – that at first sight may seem like the ranting of lunatics until that sweet epochal moment when they become magically digestible to the masses" and the creative in question is recognised as a genius (pg. 182). Yet there is an awareness, a tension, in Conception that this sweet epochal moment cannot arrive. Certainly, by the end of the book we do not see the sociopathic narrator as a genius – quite the contrary; he has proved himself indigestible.

Earlier in the novel, the narrator outlines his grand plan to his assistant, justifying it on the basis that "without art there is no true meaning to life" (pg. 113). He is correct, of course, but in trying to convey all his personality – and his personality contains more contradictions and pathologies than most – he creates something so abstract and conceptual that it cannot convey all these unsettling and imbalanced multitudes. It's not art (as people so often say of contemporary gallery pieces). Instead, it is an art scene and a culture that is driving itself mad, eating itself alive (is that Uyanik's satirical seam emerging again?), whether out of boredom, pretension or immorality. The narrator's struggle conveys that, as both he and his art scene end up conveying nothing very much. "The work of art is to be embodied wordlessly in the final concept itself, too abstract to communicate adequately in any other way. My gold-encased excreta" (pg. 192). By the end, the narrator is not a work of art, but he is a piece of work. Unfortunately, to convey all this, Conception itself has to be something of a piece of work and, like the narrator, mutilate itself with copious pretentious digressions and body horror in order to make its point. I may not love it, but I can begin to appreciate the sacrifice the novel makes in its form.

[Carla (literary.infatuation) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his brilliantly written debut, Özgür Uyanik introduces us to this unnamed struggling artist, trying to make it in the high-value conceptual art market. He’s a lost soul: uprooted from his native Turkey at a young age and transplanted into London, survivor of his twin brother and his parents terrible divorce (and mutual hatred) and unable or unwilling to deal with layers of trauma. Torn between a supporting and loving (though alcoholic and snobbish) mom and a disappointment father who would have liked his son to follow a more gender-conforming path. He’s bisexual and an artist, not what his wealthy father expected of his sole heir. Did I mention he’s a sociopath?

Uyanik, with a background in cinema and certain life events similar to our protagonist, brilliance is in writing such a hilarious satire of artists, high class and his native homeland. His protagonist is a horrible human being on a crazy quest, and yet he is not unlikable; one even gets to feel sympathy for his pain and struggle, his self-absorbness and out-of-this-world ego coupled with self-hate and trauma makes him a really raw and entertaining narrator. But without the reader noticing, his evil is slowly snowballing out of control. It is an absolute masterpiece I can’t recommend enough.

[Rutuja Ramteke · Rating 4 out of 5]

🌱Conception🌱
Enter Anonymous, a middle-ranking artist rolling between minor shows in New York, London and Istanbul. With his career sliding into obscurity, shamefully forced to consider advertising work to make ends meet, he knows he must break new ground if he is to survive.

With his mother’s encouragement, he decides upon his next work of art: an act of self-violation so outrageous, so horrific, the art world will be forced to take notice. But will it be enough to raise him to the ranks of the elite?
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🌱It's not easy to choose art, to be an artist and to choose art over again each time. I am in love with the conceptual part of the book which is very strong, it keeps on changing my perspective about various things, elements and assumptions.

For me the protagonist character worked real well but at times I wasn't sure about the plot, the book might be triggering for some, the language is easy and apt, it's gripping and moves softly.
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I loved the way it ended. This is something you must pick if you want to read something unique and diverse. Go for it.
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Rating: 3.5🌟

[Prathap · Rating 4 out of 5]

An acerbic, struggling artist in his 40s decides to save his career by concocting an idea of auto-cannibalism followed by another equally bizarre act of preserving the resulting excreta as a mural and selling it as a piece of artwork a la the work of the Italian artist Piero Manzoni in the 1960s. Uyanik's nameless first person narrator is at times hard to understand until you realise he's also a sociopath with little disregard to the lives of other people around him. An anti-hero, he stomps over people's feelings and at times their lives, struggles to straddle his relationships with his understanding mother and baffled father. For all his flaws, he is never not entertaining. A heady unputdownable mix of social commentary in prose dripping with delicious irony and spiteful malice, Uyanik's book is a treat to read.

ps: review based on an advance review copy provided by Netgalley in return for an honest review.

[Margaryta · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for an honest opinion.

DNF @ 40%

I really need to stop being lured in by books about contemporary art and, worse, about eccentric and insufferable (usually male) artists. Because they usually don’t end well for me, as a reader. Similarly, it is hard to put up with books that dangerously toe the line between satire and the perpetuation of classicist (in this case) or whatever other -ist that may apply. “Conception” is a book that is guilty of both at the same time and I have recently decided that there is too little time to put up with books that frustrate me.

Uyanik’s protagonist is a nightmare, to put it mildly. I suspect that was the intention but, as I said, there is too narrow a grey zone before all the snobbish asides about fancy dinners and eccentric personal habits make one wish the character were alive so that you could strangle them with your own hands. The protagonist is everything that contemporary culture believes a hip contemporary artist is and the fact that Uyanik draws on this stereotype and builds on it — again, for what reason I am unsure, whether deliberately feeding the hunger some readers have for this kind of glamour and drama or genuinely trying to make a larger statement — is what upset me the most, because that is what a lot of people now think it means to be an artist or to study art.

Thankfully the protagonist’s genius idea for an edgy project turned out to be less gruesome than I expected, as per one another reviewer’s trigger warning, however it was still pretty disturbing, especially the scene at Salvatore’s where Uyanik clearly enjoyed writing that detailed and drawn-out description, the only moment when I felt a kinship with the awful protagonist in our mutual queasiness. Things could easily have gotten worse during the remaining 60% of the book; I have no doubt of that. However, I was too bored and angered, in equal measure, that books like “Conception” are still being written today to endure more of it. I was ready to drop it at 30% but decided to persevere until at least the big reveal of what it is that the artist comes up with that proves to be “too far.” Kudos to Uyanik on the prose style, which is light and fast and the only redeeming quality of the book, but it is difficult to keep reading when one fundamentally disagrees with everything happening in a book and cannot stand the protagonist.

[Gunjan | Bookworm Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating - 4.25 out of 5 stars

Conception by Özgür Uyanık is a story about an average but an ambitious artist who is trying to make a name for himself in the world of art but his passion for art is affecting his career financially. He is considering working in advertising to survive but with his mother’s constant encouragement to not fall into the trap of the conventional world, he decides to do something unimaginably outrageous to shake the art world.

Narrated by an unnamed and unreliable protagonist, conception is a story about what art is and how differently it is perceived by everyone. Our narrator is a narcissist and a sociopath, and he has told this story with minute observations and dark humor in a way that I was surprised at how someone could be so self-absorbed and pretentious that he fails to see the truth. He just wants recognition, no matter the price.

I think his constant struggle with finding his identity, personally and professionally, his fathers’ avoidance and his mothers’ obsession had a lot to do with his personality and it was riveting to read the story with his perspective. We also get to see how difficult it is to make a name for yourself in the art world and to get your art out to the world.

I don’t want to spoil it for you but I was shocked when our protagonist revealed his next groundbreaking work of art. I mean the details thereafter were so visual and gruesome, to begin with, that I had to take a minute to contemplate what was happening and I never ever thought that I would read something like it. The book definitely has a gripping storyline with beautiful writing, I had to use the dictionary in almost every other page but it was an absolutely engaging and thought-provoking piece of work.

Trigger Warnings - Gore, Self-harm, and abuse

[Adam Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

"People always say they want things dark, but if you don't have a plan to draw people out of that and show how these people overcome it, then you just leave your audience in despair" - Dave Filoni. Conception by Ozgur Uyanik takes a gander at those pretentious self-absorbed wannabe artists who are dying for the art.

A struggling artist in his 40s decides to save his career by concocting an idea of auto-cannibalism followed by another equally bizarre act of preserving the resulting excreta as a mural and selling it as a piece of artwork a la the work of the Italian artist Piero Manzoni in the 1960s. With his mother's encouragement, he decides upon his next work of art: an act of self-violation so outrageous, so horrific, the art world will be forced to take notice. But will it be enough to raise him to the ranks of the elite?

This novel is a nice, satirical send-up of the contemporary art world! The cover is also something else! With a novel cover like this one, I would've imagined that I was going to enter a darkly comic world where you are left wondering whether this world fact or fiction. The use a black biro to block out the face pulls you in, almost like a black hole.

Meaningful conflict is the soul of drama. Darkness-induced audience apathy occurs when a conflict exists that lacks a reason for the audience to care about how it is resolved. This crops up where the setting is hugely but meaninglessly darker & edgier or all sides are evil vs evil or, at least, far enough gone that the difference is negligible. Even if the heroes are heroic because the authors say they are, sometimes shows with sympathetic heroes have this trope happen because they lack any agency. Our nameless protagonist is a sociopath, yet his words still engage us. One even gets to feel sympathy for his pain & struggle, his out-of-this-world ego, coupled with self-hate & trauma, makes him a raw & entertaining character.

[ra · Rating 3 out of 5]

tw: gore, sexual assault
this really isn't for the faint of heart so unless you're just insanely curious or can bear the triggers I've listed, I doubt this will be a book for everyone.

coming across this book, the premise caught my eye immediately. I've really come to enjoy books that discuss contemporary, conceptual art and this vaguely reminded me of Ping Xi from My Year of Rest and Relaxation in terms of how it centralised discussions about spectatorship and the role of institutions in upholding art - or 'art'. thematically, this also reminded me of Of Human Bondage, in that it also asked the question: "What is my life worth if my work, what I produce, has no value?" although Of Human Bondage dealt with the self-importance of the Impressionists, I felt that this book showed the timelessness of that question now further inflated in the modern era of contemporary conceptual art and the new afterlives it can occupy given the technology we now have.

in terms of the downside of this book, I found myself being really thrown off by the writing style. although it did wonders to quickly establish a vivid characterisation of the narrator, by being so over-written I felt that it took away from the the sequencing of plot events and ended up being disruptive to the experience (basically a lot more telling and not nearly enough showing) as aforementioned, this could've been an artistic choice in terms of establishing the narrator's characterisation as a sociopath but I just feel it would've been helpful for readability if that were taken down a notch if only to help the book flow a little better.

overall, this was a short and fairly interesting book, I just wish it had cut the fat a little more in order to really deliver a stinging final punch.

Thank you to NetGalley and Fairlight Books for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Laura Rubia · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is finally here! Publication day for this fine piece of fiction.

In Conception, we find ourselves head on with the first person narration of a sociopath artist whose career is at stake due to a plateau in his creative process.
We follow his struggles with identity; born in Istanbul, he was raised in London from a young age. He finds himself in between the two places but he doesn't know where he belongs.
On top of that, we see the family clashes up close. Counting on a supportive mother, he finds himself seeking the approval of a strict father who pushes him to leave art in order to make a life for himself.
He is always trying to brainstorm new ideas to prove his worth to his father through his art.
That is when he comes with a shocking, invasive and outreageous idea to make his art emerge from its ashes. Will his conceptual art live on?
It is a dark piece of fiction. There is a trigger warning including sexual assault and some violence.
The main character is hard to like. He is arrogant, narcissistic, extravagant and over the top, even more so as we discover more traits about his personality.
However, I was gripped and curious from the very begginning. He made me feel intrigued. What will he do next? Will he finally follow through with what he has made up his mind to do?
I would recommend giving it a try for yourself. It is not a read for everyone. In my opinion, it is worth the read because the writing is really good and if you are hooked you will read on and on.
It was a 4 stars read for me.
I wanted to take some time to thanks Bradley, who kindly sent me my ARC and everyone else at Fairlight Books.
They are hosting a giveaway of the book at the moment to celebrate publication day, good luck and happy reading!

[Nicki Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conception was a very different and interesting read. I thought the idea worked well, and the story kept me guessing at every turn as I wondered exactly how things would pan out for the narrator and his eccentric venture. The story flowed nicely and the prose was quick and easy reading, despite the subject matter. This is probably not a story for the fainthearted; it certainly won't appeal to everyone. But I found it deeply engaging, probably because I like characters who are a darker and stranger and less the matinee-hero type. It's certainly a thought-provoking work, so I recommend it to readers who like their humour on the blacker side.

I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[philosophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nevertheless, I strongly suspect that I might have been happier lolling through existence like an overfed cat slinking from one life event to the next if I had been without her guidance and constant affirmations during my formative years.

Mood.

The copy was kindly provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley.