Deep Burn, the debut novel by Brendan Mac Evilly, follows Martha Knox, a woman in her late 30s who has been unceremoniously dumped by her husband Gerry less than a year into their marriage. It was no coincidence that the break up came after the couple discovered Martha could not have children.
With her abandonment, Martha abandons the life she expected to live and her home in Dublin, travelling across the country to a rural town in Kerry. There, she takes up residence at an artist's studio ready to mould the remains of her life into something new.
With the support of a local faded artist Vinny, the owner of the studio and her almost-art-dealer, a teenage apprentice and a number of clients, Martha establishes herself a as a photographer with a compelling hook: burning objects of sentimental or significant personal value and photographing the process.
The project is her attempt at making art that is both useful as well as therapeutic, and creating something new, beautiful and potentially frightening in the process. A "kind of unburdening service", she calls it.
Creation, and the uncomfortable, complicated reality of it, is at the novel’s core and something that Mac Evilly has intimate knowledge of. As founding editor of popular cultural journal Holy Show, author of At Swim: A Book About the Sea and a ceramicist, Mac Evilly has earned his stripes navigating a career in the broader art world, and one senses an understanding of the highs and lows of such an industry in the novel.
Mac Evilly opens the novel with a quotation from Grayson Perry’s book Playing to the Gallery, based on Perry’s lauded BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures. This nod to the contemporary art world’s predilection for sycophancy and inauthenticity is echoed throughout the plot, as Martha incredulously rises to the upper echelons of the contemporary art scene.
While making her photographs, Martha is plagued by self doubt, questioning her inspirations, the people around her and the point of the work itself. Each time this happens, however, there’s another figure ‘in the know’ asserting that what she’s doing is good, just, worthwhile and unique. It’s a subtle reminder of the insincerity of such circles, and amplifies Martha’s own struggles to listen to herself.
Soon enough, however, Martha begins to learn the ways to advance: "… as long as her photo was presented with the right story, the right explanation, like the one Longwood has just provided, she could get away with it."
Most compelling of all, perhaps, is the relationship between Martha and Vinny, a wonderfully visceral character. As her career blossoms, not without considerable (if largely unwanted) guidance from him, their strange coupling becomes even more perplexing, as though he was grafted onto her against her will. It’s an eerie examination of envy and competition and - to borrow Vinny's penchant for comparison - very All About Eve.
"Her growing prospects were affecting his own ambitions", she thinks at one stage, considering the trajectory of her burgeoning fame. "However far it took her, she sense in Vinny the growing compulsion to follow."
A nimble novel rich in imagery, Deep Burn is filled with these wry observations. Entering Kilnaboy for the first time, Martha is told about a famine village that’s been converted into a yoga retreat. "You wouldn’t believe the prices people will pay to stretch their legs. And then spend nothing in the pubs below", Vinny quips.
When she meets Bille, her 17-year-old collaborator, Billie walks off with Martha’s camera, before spotting her alarm. "Did you think I was robbing your camera?" she asks. "Wow. Sad. You’re so from Dublin."
Nimble as it is, the novel at times speeds ahead, with little connection to the trappings of the life Martha abandoned. Within hours of leaving Dublin following a breakup that allegedly blindsided her, Martha is settled into a life in a seaside village in Kerry and willing Vinny to come onto her.
When mentions of Gerry do arise they’re abrupt and disjointed, such as Martha suddenly missing him and the idea of a relationship while taking a photo of a man’s ashes being burned (again). The thrust of the main plot is so - excuse the pun - incendiary that it sometimes feels like Mac Evilly forgets to let Martha fully reflect on the ashes of her past.
Deep Burn is published by Marrowbone Books
