Arty Calls

The Last Hundred Days of a Fictional Poet

Patrick McGuinness is an extraordinary man worthy of his own parade of big black cars and well-behaved bystanders waving flags and cheering. In this case it is Ceaușescu's regime and the fall of Communism in Romania that provide the emperor's new clothes and form the background to this well written and entertaining fact based fiction (if you'll forgive that description because it does read like a factual memoir). The writing is delicious in it's own right because of it's precision and grim faced humour. That's because McGuinness is really a poet. But you can't make a living as a poet. So by profession he is an academic. He presumably does this fiction lark as a semi-lucrative diversion. That's really annoying - that he can invade other people's memories, other people's countries and other people's professions and be so exquisitely expressive in all of them.