Reviewer Kirsten Krauth, writing for The Brisbane Times and WA Today, describes The Phantom Surrealist as a playful search for an elusive Australian artist named Robert J Wake. Wake grows up in Surry Hills, ends up among the surrealists with Miro and Picasso, then disappears in Spain.
The detective is Christopher Tiffen, a PhD student writing an art history thesis. Tiffen scrambles for clues: Did Wake go to prison during the Spanish Civil War? Where have his artworks gone? Is he still alive? A parallel story follows Tiffen's romance with Agnes, whom he meets while staring at a painting in a Sydney art gallery. She works at the Berowra Waters Inn, and Tiffen tries to win her affections while working alone in a Kombi van in Hill End, where Wake once painted in an abandoned cottage.
Krauth writes that Gates's fiction is often hilarious and tongue-in-cheek, especially when his unreliable narrator mansplains thesis ideas to anyone who will or will not listen. The contemporary narrative echoes Wake's journey: Wake sailed to pre-World War II London while Tiffen flies into Heathrow. The two narratives eventually intersect in a deus ex machina that the reviewer finds 'too insanely neat,' but perhaps not for Tiffen's imaginings.
The novel's central concerns include fantasy and escape, fakery, and the false motivations people project onto others. Krauth notes that Wake works in a propaganda unit in Spain and a camouflage unit in Australia, where his work is transitory and unsigned. The book also draws attention to the women-lovers of painters who are not recognised for their own work and activism, and to pre- and postwar Australian artists who became key figures in international art scenes but are absent from galleries, catalogues and archives.
Krauth finds the parallel narratives at times too delineated, and suggests more blurring of character, time and space might have kept the book 'aptly surreal and uncertain.' Overall, she calls The Phantom Surrealist 'an enticing novel' that dissects what it means to be an Australian artist in the world and what it takes to find a sense of home.
The Phantom Surrealist, by Geoffrey Gates, is published by Transit Lounge and is available now for $33.