This is a long and difficult book; I did punctuate it with no.290.
About a modernist painter in modern day Australia; dedicated to Sydney Nolan. It begins brilliantly as Hurtle is purchased from his poor working class family by the wealthy woman for whom his mother cleans, very Dickensian.
Propelled artificially upward in society and education, and obsessed with his adoptive mother (with whom possibly he sleeps) he moves through the 20th century obsessed with sex, women and painting.
He has five significant relationships throughout his life and work; a prostitute, a society women, a thirteen year old girl and his deformed adoptive sister. He sleeps and is obsessed with all of them except his sister, but all of them act in different ways as his muse.
It is pretty impressive as a major and very heavyweight novel; far better for instance than 'The Idiot' (of similar length and which has become my yardstick for an over-rated novel).
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