Ken Black is dead. Even his family refers to him in death as Ken Black, artist. He was a great Australian painter and he was also a complete shit. Everybody says so. His widow Leila Whittaker, who is the narrator of Kylie Mirmohamadi’s debut novel, Diving, Falling, is loquacious about the shortcomings of Ken Black, artist. Her best friend Nessa never liked him; her kids, Sebastian and Otis, still live in the shadow of their father. And now this colossus of a man is dead. What is left for Leila and his family?
We begin Diving, Falling just after Ken’s death, as Leila, a novelist, is busy writing his obituary. You get the feeling that Ken might have expected that this novel narrated by his wife would be about him too, about his great art, charisma and libido, about the marks he left on the world. And at the outset, Diving, Falling is preoccupied with Ken’s legacy, what to do with his archive, squabbles about the sale of a painting, with the empty spaces in the grand house that he built.
