Kevin

Kevin Pace, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, is a fifty-six-year-old abstract painter. He lives in Martha’s Vineyard with his wife, Linda, and their two children, April and Will. At the novel’s opening, Kevin has been working for a considerable time on a “private” (5) painting which he is creating in a locked barn: he allows no one, not even his wife or his best friend Richard, to view it. The painting is an obsession and even an addiction for Kevin: it provides him with cathartic release from the secrets he has been harboring from his wife for the entirety of their marriage, as he expresses his emotions and secrets through art. The painting is also intimately connected with Kevin – he is recalcitrant and introspective, unable to share his emotions, so he utilizes the artwork to process his feelings and the trauma that he endured on a...