Artist Donvé Lee’s An Intimate War is one of the few novels to bring as close together as possible the art forms of writing and painting. Vary rarely does a writer manage to create a piece on so visceral a level, with colour and mood seemingly squeezed and blended from every word.

The Long and the Short of It

An Intimate War paints for the reader a graphic dissection of the passion shared fiercely between two unnamed lovers, both of whom are broken and bruised in certain ways form the adversities in their pasts. This is, in essence, the extent of the plot, and those who look for twists and dramatics, beyond the emotions of two people, in their reading will be disappointed or unsatisfied.

However, this should in no way be considered a fault in the novel. Much importance nowadays is given to the happenings within prose, and while plot can certainly add great backbone to the quality and enjoyment of a novel, it should never be thought of as a necessary ingredient for a successful book. One need only look to novels such as Mrs Dalloway and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to see that even the most simple slices of life can reach heights of masterpiece.

Hint of Stream of Consciousness

One can also see a likeness between Lee’s work and the abovementioned classics in the fundamental style of the novel. There is a certain pace to the prose that has very much the flavour of a stream of consciousness flow, with almost no distinction placed upon the context of time, giving the words an independent chronology and allowing the flush and hustle of emotion and sensation to dominate the reader’s impression fully. Dialogues are stripped of their usual identification devices, and memories of the narrator and present awareness are given equal treatment, so that one cannot but feel an overall ethereal, dreamlike quality to the book.  

Only You and I

What makes Lee’s novel that much more unusual is her choice of narration: its primary voice is that of first person present, yet it touches more than lightly upon the almost unheard of second person perspective, with the unnamed female constantly relaying to the reader the actions of her lover through a perpetual inner monologue addressed to the male character.

Such a device of course captures perfectly the mood of the theme Donvé Lee seeks to explore within the novel – an air of almost claustrophobic intimacy is flawlessly rendered by the narrator commenting on all but exclusively the actions of her and her lover, with other characters left completely within the periphery of the story.

Generally this exclusivity would pose a snare for a novel. Often a drought of characters can leave the pages of a book mundane and without colour; and by and large, the more varied and distinct a cast of characters a book has, the greater is the accolade given to the novel. But Lee’s small assortment of figures is effective in exactly the same way her choice of narration is; this is a story set around an intense affair, an intimate war, and the characters or lack thereof serve only to add all the more focus to the subject of the novel.

An Artist’s Touch 

The highlight of Lee’s work, though, is undoubtedly the loveliness of her prose. Descriptions and perspectives are rendered in such a way as perhaps only an artist can manage. Lee somehow manages to bleed words of their full sense, and saturates her pages with images and sensation that seem almost more belonging to poetry than prose. Scenes within the novel are not described, but rather painted, so that almost every tone and texture of an object portrayed is utterly tangible.

An Intimate War is in all considerations a remarkable work, crafted so beautifully that one might actually consider the removal and framing of each page.

Published by Jacana Media