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Bold Ventures: 13 Tales of Architectural Tragedy

Bold Ventures: 13 Tales of Architectural Tragedy

Bold Ventures: 13 Tales of Architectural Tragedy by Charlotte Van den Broeck, translation: David McKay
(Chatto & Windus, 2022, 304 pages)

In thirteen chapters, Belgian poet Charlotte Van den Broeck goes in search of buildings that were fatal for their architects – architects who either killed themselves or are rumoured to have done so. They range across time and space from a church with a twisted spire built in seventeenth-century France to a theatre that collapsed mid-performance in 1920s Washington, DC., and an eerily sinking swimming pool in her hometown of Turnhout.

Drawing on a vast range of material, from Hegel and Charles Darwin to art history, stories from her own life and popular culture, patterns gradually come into focus, as Van den Broeck asks: what is that strange life-or-death connection between a creation and its creator?

Threaded through each story, and in prose of great essayistic subtlety, Van den Broeck meditates on the question of suicide – what Albert Camus called the ‘one truly serious philosophical problem’ – in relation to creativity and public disgrace. The result is a profoundly idiosyncratic book, breaking new ground in literary non-fiction, as well as providing solace and consolation – and a note of caution – to anyone who has ever risked their hand at a creative act.

‘What a sensible, intelligent and beautiful book.’ – Stefan Hertmans, author of War and Turpentine

Tags

non-fiction