I think it's fair to start this out by saying I should be the target audience for this book.

I'm a huge Francis Bacon fan, so I'm very familiar with his painting style, technique and life. I also loved Lanny, which was one of my favourite books of 2019.

Going in I knew this was going to be experimental, the idea of layering language like brushstrokes. With how short this book is I really wanted to savour the pieces and took my time with it, reading one painting a day.

Like a painting you can't just look at each piece once, and each prose painting requires multiple readings. Reading it this way I was much more aware of the repetitiveness that wove through the collection, and while I understand the use of that in poetry, I did struggle with it for an entire book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Strange Light/Random House for an ARC of this title.

David Mitchell recently popularised the phrase (originally attributed to Martin Mull of all people), “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, and in the same vein, with The Death of Francis Bacon, author Max Porter ups the ante by not simply writing about painting but attempting to “write as painting” (according to a quote on his publisher’s website). I confess to not being familiar with the life and work of the (surrealist? abstract impressionist?) British painter Francis Bacon, but I did do a shallow dive before starting this short novella and I would suggest that some such familiarity is absolutely necessary for anyone hoping to discover a few handholds of reality in this slippery, abstract work. And do you know what I discovered? I don’t really “get” or “like” the work of Francis Bacon. It’s too weird and ugly and unsettling, and by attempting to “replicate thought, struggle, the struggle of thought, but also the sheer energy of the eye’s confrontation with the painted image” through writing (an effort as sensical as dancing about architecture), Porter has created a narrative that is equally as weird, ugly, and unsettling — but with the added confusion of language. Were I a knowledgeable and devoted fan of Bacon’s work, I might have found this a brilliant bit of prose; but as a Philistine who would likely give Britain’s most famous and highest-selling artist a three star rating, I can only do the same for this novella.