Benchere in Wonderland

October 26, 2015
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 humankindâhere 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 artâif there can be such a thing.

July 15, 2015
A visionary artist battles human, natural, and political elements in this offbeat novel. Gillis' (The Consequence of Skating, 2010, etc.) hero, Michael Benchere, is a brilliant architect who's become a celebrity sculptor. The story flashes back to Benchere's courtship of his college sweetheart, Marti, with whom he discovers his artistic gifts, and her later death from cancer. Newly grief-stricken, Benchere resolves to journey to Botswana, where he'll sculpt an epic piece in Marti's memory. He's accompanied by various hangers-on including Rose and Stern, two stumbling FBI agents whose resemblance to Shakespeare's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is obviously intentional. Also making the trip are Zooie, Benchere's daughter, who's a low-level rock performer, and Linda Darling, a reality TV star in need of rehab. Both of these subplots are largely tossed aside while others, like Benchere's tangles with a money-hungry patron, are stretched too thin. Benchere ultimately finds new love after a violent encounter with local insurgents. The book's tone regularly shifts from sentimental to slapstick to surreal, and there are frequent digressions about the nature of artistic creation and revolutionary struggle. And for some reason, the whereabouts of Benchere's dog are noted on nearly every page. At times there are simply too many ideas here for a short novel to juggle. Despite some touching passages, Gillis seems uncertain where to take his story and winds up trying with limited success to take it everywhere at once.

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