Diary of a Film
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
'Niven Govinden's Diary of a Film, his sixth novel, is also his best yet. Smart, sexy and cinematic (in many senses), it is a love letter to Italy and to film' Observer
'Immersive . . . This is a wise and skilfully controlled novel that can be read in an afternoon, but which radiates in the mind for much longer' Financial Times
'A beautiful, poignant novel of love and longing' Telegraph
An auteur, together with his lead actors, is at a prestigious European festival to premiere his latest film.
Alone one morning at a backstreet café, he strikes up a conversation with a local woman who takes him on a walk to uncover the city's secrets, historic and personal. As the walk unwinds, a story of love and tragedy emerges, and he begins to see the chance meeting as fate. He is entranced, wholly clear in his mind: her story must surely form the basis for his next film.
This is a novel about cinema, flâneurs, and queer love - it is about the sometimes troubled, sometimes ecstatic creative process, and the toll it takes on its makers.
But it is also a novel about stories, and the ongoing question of who has the right to tell them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this atmospheric if slightly mannered novel from Govinden (This Brutal House), a Zagreb filmmaker roams an Italian city in the lead-up to the festival premiere of his latest film. The unnamed "maestro" meets a woman, Cosima, strolls through the city with her, visits the murals her boyfriend had painted in the 1980s before dying by suicide, and reads her novel, which he hopes to adapt for his next project. As the visit draws to a close, her hesitation to cede the rights—rooted in her objection to his directorial vision—provides a sliver of drama. Govinden shines in scenes involving the filmmaker observing his two young stars as they negotiate their growing fame, tenuous new romance with each other, and sense of melancholy that they won't be able to recapture their magical intimacy on future projects. There are some lovely paeans to a fading film world: "This is what cinema is: the noise, torn sprockets patched together; the heat and smell of burning from the machine." Too often, though, characters have a stage-ready monologue or affected declaration at the ready: "If you are a flâneur, maestro, then I'm a flâneuse.... Walking is what gives me life, and what stimulates my ideas," says Cosima. Nonetheless, readers can't help being seduced by the protagonist's commitment to a life of art.
