{"id":571,"date":"2008-01-21T09:02:58","date_gmt":"2008-01-21T14:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/wordpress\/?p=571"},"modified":"2024-01-28T20:55:54","modified_gmt":"2024-01-28T19:55:54","slug":"laird-hunt-the-exquisite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2008\/01\/21\/laird-hunt-the-exquisite\/","title":{"rendered":"Laird Hunt &#8211; &#8220;The Exquisite&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<table class=\"imagecontainer\">\n<tr>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/Rembrandt_anatomy_lesson_of_Dr_Tulp.jpg\" ><\/tr>\n<\/td>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"imagecaption\">Rembrandt, <i>The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp<\/i><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>\n<i>The Exquisite<\/i> seems to be the story of a drunk, mentally unstable thief named Henry and his friend Mr. Kindt. Mr. Kindt is an older gentleman with a passion for herring who may be a crime boss, a descendant of the subject of Rembrandt&rsquo;s The Anatomy Lesson, or both. Somehow he manages to come across as spooky rather than silly (at least mostly), as do his associates, the contortionist twins and a beautiful tattoo artist named Tulip. Henry visits Mr. Kindt in his apartment, has long conversations with him, and sort of becames engaged to perform certain &ldquo;services&rdquo; for Mr. Kindt.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nInterspersed with scenes of this story is another one, where Henry is in the hospital after a traffic accident. Mr. Kindt is also in the hospital, and they are cared for by a Dr. Tulp. People sharing names and characteristics float from one story to another, and it never becomes quite clear whether they are the same people or not &ndash; just as it is never clear whether these parallel scenes precede, follow, or coincide with the main story.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nEven though there are sequences of events, the book doesn&rsquo;t exactly have a plot. The whole thing is vaguely dreamlike and has a hallucinatory feel &ndash; as if Henry was floating through the world only half-aware of what was going on around him, and occasionally mixed up dream and reality.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI found it hard to really get engaged in the book and struggled to keep reading it. It wasn&rsquo;t exactly bad but it didn&rsquo;t pull me in at all. Reviews that I&rsquo;ve seen of the book have ranged from positive to glowing. Perhaps this is another one of those <a href=\"http:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2007\/01\/29\/jeff_vandermeer_city_of_saints\/\">too-modern books that some of us just don&rsquo;t &ldquo;get&rdquo;<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Exquisite-Laird-Hunt\/dp\/1566891876\/\">Amazon UK<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Exquisite-Laird-Hunt\/dp\/1566891876\/\">Amazon US<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp The Exquisite seems to be the story of a drunk, mentally unstable thief named Henry and his friend Mr. Kindt. Mr. Kindt is an older gentleman with a passion for herring who may be a crime boss, a descendant of the subject of Rembrandt&rsquo;s The Anatomy Lesson, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18414,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions\/18414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}