Port Mungo

By Patrick McGrath

In a seedy river town on the Gulf of Honduras, Jack Rathbone believed he had found a place that would give him and his lover, the accomplished artist Vera Savage, the solitude they would need to create a body of work that would shake the art world to its core. But in a place where time lies thicker than the mangrove swamps that surround it, Jack and Vera discover an emotional frontier more fearsome, untamed, and dangerous than any wilderness.Told through the voice of Jack’s adoring sister, Gin, Port Mungo is the riveting story of this ill-fated couple, one that begins as a bohemian flight-of-fancy before unraveling into a dark, debauched and sinister tale. With Port Mungo, the incomparable Patrick McGrath, author of the acclaimed novels Spider and Asylum, delivers a spellbinding narrative to explore the obsessive pursuit of art and love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 1, 2004
• ISBN: 9781400043026

Patrick McGrath

Patrick McGrath is the author of several modern gothic novels, including Asylum and Spider, and two collections of stories. He lives in New York, where he is on the writing faculties of the New School and Princeton University.

Reviews for Port Mungo

[bookmarque · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Patrick McGrath is master of the unreliable narrator. His skill is applied with precision and deliberation. Even though I know Gin is unreliable, her judgment and opinions to be taken with the mightiest grain of salt, he eventually lulls me into complacence. I fall under a spell of sorts and frame my perceptions to align with Gin’s; no matter that I know better. And in the end, when McGrath pulls the curtain back to reveal the truth I knew was there all along, I’m still astonished. I also know and love McGrath’s adept use of foreshadowing and I shouldn’t be surprised by anything that happens, but yet I am.This is my fifth McGrath novel and even though his style pervades, he manages to create widely diverse situations and characters. This time we have a couple of ill-fated lovers who indulge in a very 1950s style of bohemian living. Typical enough, but the circumstances are tilted and the narrator of their story definitely biased. She is willfully blind to her brother Jack’s faults. She willfully scandalizes Vera, his lover and mother of his children. She willfully aggrandizes his art and his calling. He is the perfect father and brother at all times. Even his faults are made magnificent and part of his higher calling. We know this cannot be true, but still, McGrath makes it all seem so reasonable. So right.The descriptions of life in the wretched Port Mungo are shrouded by the mists of time and distance. We weren’t there. Our narrator wasn’t either, but yet we find the expected truth of what we’re told comforting. Of course Jack is an exile; he wants perfection and won’t settle for anything less. Artistic credibility and integrity are noble pursuits indeed. Vera’s abandonment of him and their daughters is almost on cue. We expect it and raise Jack even higher in our esteem in the face of her cowardice and selfishness.But then the cracks appear. Why did Jack so easily let Anna, his surviving daughter, go to his proper, upstanding brother Gerald? This in the face of the zeal with which he persevered as Peg’s father; his martyrly devotion to show up Vera’s shortcomings so starkly. Why has his return to the New York art scene been so tepid and lackluster? Why has Vera continued to fall back into his life with such unexpected regularity? Why does Anna display behavior so contrary to her Sussex upbringing? The façade crumbles and reality is bathed in the full light of Vera’s scorn and Gin’s disbelief. Very well done and an intriguing, hypnotic tale. The Rathbone Curse indeed.