Jeremy Cooper's Three Novels

Sunday, June 7, 2024

I just finished reading Jeremy Cooper’s Bolt From The Blue, and I’m very impressed with his work, as I also read two other books by him, Ash Before Oak and Brian. I identify with all of his character’s anxiety issues but also his interest in the visual arts, literature, and film. He covers all the material for me, and I also admire how he puts it in real life within his narratives. All his work reads like non-fiction, although technically, they are fiction.

Cooper is very much connected with the British art scene of the 1990s, and there are a lot of references in both Bolt From The Blue and Ash Before Oak. Cooper is also very much interested in artist’s postcards, which he has a collection of, but he shares that obsession with his lead characters in two of the novels. Brian focuses on a man who goes to the BFI theater to see two films every day. So there is that duality of keeping a “film” diary, which can be valid to the author and postcard collecting.

Cooper is also an art historian who has published books on the Young British Artists (YBA) and the artists' postcards. His mixture of interest in the cinema and the visual arts, specifically the British artists, and his observations about nature and the strong sense of location is a heady cocktail for me. Interestingly, his recent works read like a diary or journal, or in the case of Bolt From The Blue, a correspondence mainly on postcards between an artist and her mother. The relationship between the two is dicey, but I think it is also prevalent, and that is another beautiful aspect of Cooper’s observations and literary style. All his work I have read so far is intimate. Difficult times are felt, and these books are a good companion.