cover image Benchere in Wonderland

Benchere in Wonderland

Steve Gillis. Hawthorne (PGW, dist.), $18.95 trade paper (232p) ISBN 978-0-9904370-5-5

Plaudits are due for Gillis's brilliant fifth novel, an ambitious treatise on the role of art and the artist in modern day society. The author has an uncanny knack for depicting the best and worst of humankind%E2%80%94here their respective avatars are Michael Benchere, a no-nonsense, bigger-than-life sculptor and self-taught architect, and Dancy Mund, a smarmy hotel chain owner. They who face off over a spot in the Kalahari Desert where Benchere has decided to erect one of his works of art. Gillis skillfully skips between character backstory and the present art project. Along the way, readers meet Benchere's soul mate and wife, Marti, the inspiration for his work, and his daughter, Zooie, a musician who decides to join the Kalahari adventure after connecting romantically with a filmmaker who's documenting the project. Gillis's novel carefully examins the fallibility and resolve of the artist, the myriad repercussions that art can have, and the different ramifications of political art and art created merely for the sake of art%E2%80%94if there can be such a thing. (Sept.)