Boogie Woogie (Duckbacks)

The book's title comes from Piet Mondrian's famous painting Broadway Boogie-Woogie, an iconic image of abstract expressionism painted in New York in the 1940s. Alfred and Alfreda Rheingold are the proud but eccentric owners of one of Mondrian's last Boogie-Woogie paintings. In sweaty pursuit of the Mondrian is the reptilian, golf-loving art dealer Art Spindle, who prides himself on once having "managed to sell a Picasso atercolour on the 11th green". What unfolds in the manic attempt to land the Mondrian is a dizzying montage of the great and the not so good of New York's art world. Its neurotic, self-seeking cast list includes the predatory tattooed lesbian video-artist Elaine, the vain but failed artist Jo Richard with a penchant for anal sex, and the lecherous stammering collector Bob Macclestone with his "ah, Brancusi, ah, in the, ah, hallway".

Moynihan paints a satirical and often hilarious portrait of the openings, closings and bad repartee of an art world where as one of Spindle's clients tells him, "That's business, Art". Told in the style of Robert Altman's filmShort Cuts and reminiscent of Altman's own send-up of Hollywood life The Player, Boogie-Woogie does at times become too clever for its own good, and the hollowness of its entire cast grates towards the end. Nevertheless, it is a very funny and wry view of an art world gone mad.--Jerry Brotton