Painter to the King - Part 1 (spoilers allowed) (Aug 2019)

[Hugh]

This topic is for your first impressions of the book - spoilers for anything up to the end of part 1 are fine, but please don't discuss the later parts of the book here.

How do you feel about the narrative style? How much did you know about Velázquez and the wider aspects of Spanish history? I would also be interested in any thoughts on the more visual aspects - my visual memory and imagination is very poor, but my sense was that Sackville was enable to deduce a lot from the details of the paintings.

My first impressions were that the style of the narrative takes a little getting used to - dashes and ellipses all over the place. But pretty soon I found myself gripped - I knew very little about Velázquez or seventeenth century Spain, and I loved Sackville's occasional asides about her own experiences.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

[Pamela]

I'm just coming to the end of Part 1 and I'm really impressed. I thought the narrative style might be a bit gimmicky but it works well - we get an impression of a train of thought from the broken sentences, but they are mixed in with more conventional narrative, so it isn't a chore to follow it.

I didn't know much about Velázquez, and nothing about Philip IV or the Count-Duke (which I was amazed to find actually was his title, I thought it was a cheeky dig!) so I skimmed the Wikipedia entries while reading. I wasn't sure about doing that, as I thought it might detract from the way Sackville wants to reveal her characters to us, usually I would fill in any knowledge gaps after reading. But this time I had so little prior knowledge that it seems to have been useful.

I'm not so sure about the narrative asides, I found them slightly distracting, but overall I am thoroughly enjoying this fascinating novel.

[Hugh]

Thanks Pamela - your impressions sound quite similar to mine. I hope this discussion is a slow burner and more people will join given time.

[Pamela]

I hope so Hugh, it's a really interesting book. I've just read some background on La Calderona, Philip's mistress, and her story is heartrending. I wonder if there are any books about her?

This reminds me in some ways of Wolf Hall, but with more visual input. Like 'he' is usually Cromwell, similarly a glimpse of blond hair generally refers to Philip?