The Bath Fugues

The Bath Fugues is Castro at his best, in a wonderful performance wrought from intrigue, romance, deception - and comedy. The book is composed of three interwoven novellas, the first centred on an ageing art forger; the second on a Portuguese poet, opium addict and collector; the third told by a well-connected doctor, with a cabinet of venom, and an art gallery on the north Queensland coast. Around these characters circle others, in the contrapuntal manner of the fugue suggested by the book's title.