Book review: Mr Bosch and His Owls by Cath Barton

Jon Gower

The Mr Bosch in the title of this collection of elegantly skewed short stories by the Abergavenny-based writer is Hieronymus Bosch, the 16th century Dutch painter of fantastical scenes in works such as ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ and ‘Hell.’

They were often triptychs, with complex visions set in each of three panels and it is tempting to see Cath Barton’s prose pieces as similar panels, each one adding to the overall picture.

I’m not sure if Bosch had a lot of fun as he worked on his extraordinary visions but it is evident from Barton’s work that here is a playfully, impish spirit at work as she teases the reader like unspooling a ball of wool in front of a hyper-attentive kitten.

We visit a Greek  island which is a lot like Patmos but then quite unlike it. There’s often an element of tease and gentle deception at work her, and an awful lot of owls which fly in pretty much everywhere.

They’re motifs in the prose, sometimes talismanic, at other times just a shape that appears mysteriously on a computer print-out.

Some of the prose adventures in Mr Bosch and His Owls not only feature paintings but the characters can enter into them, as if they can step into the frames, or teleport themselves into the oil-painted past.

And, being Bosch paintings, there’s a strange, porcupine-like creature to show you around: ‘I told him it was my first trip to those times and that I would be grateful for his guidance. He took me round the scene, which was crowded and noisy, and centred on a vast stack of hay. In one corner a nun sat holding a bawling baby while a man pleasured her beneath her skirts; nearby a cowled monk played on the bagpipes. All kinds of devices and desires were on display and without a guide it would have been easy to take a wrong turning and end up i the hellish panel alongside it.’

Compelling

It’s a quietly compelling idea, this, that you can actually walk into the world of a painting, and then stroll around at your leisure, or that some paintings are only put on view for a single day of the year (this one seems to have more than a grain of truth about it.)

Many of the stories connect and overlap, much as the magical elements in Bosch’s work recur and add up into a wondrous, colourful whole.

In ‘The Famous Beethoven’ a young American called Albie, who shares his surname with the great composer heads off to Europe and on the way a fellow traveller encourages him to go see some Bosch: ‘Super-cool dude. Big on weird stuff. And owls. You’ve gotta go look when you’re in Vienna – there’s a few places got his work.’

Which Abie duly does, visiting the Kunsthistorisches Museum where he studies all the faces of the people walking alongside Christ as he carries his cross.’ ‘They were pretty strange, grizzled and unhappy-looking. No wonder, thought Abbie, it was an unhappy place to be, the road to the Cross…’

Delightfully odd

There’s only one story expressly set in Wales and it’s as delightfully odd as all the rest in this lively, entertaining collection. In ‘The Wood has Ears, the Field has Eyes’ a young museum attendant called Pedr spends his days in a remote venue dedicated to the memory of a group of obscure poets, who are present in the form of clunky animatronics. One day there’s an almighty storm and with it is occasioned a series of unexplainable events which change the course of his life.

There’s plenty of imagination in play in these stories, which confidently meld the domestic with the extraordinary, set surreal scenes in the middle of the everyday. But it’s the sense of fun which lingers, communicating directly with the reader, bringing out some wry smiles as one follows the far from predictable journeys of the tales.

Mr Bosch and His Owls by Cath Barton is published by Atomic Bohemian. It is available to purchase here.