'Sometimes I wonder, if I had known that it was going to take me
fourteen years to paint this painting of the Crucifixion with Douglas as
Jesus, and what it would take for me to paint this painting, would I
have been as happy as I was then?'
Susan Alison MacLeod, a Glasgow School of Art graduate with a dark sense
of humour, first lays eyes on Douglas MacDougal at a party in 1988, and
resolves to put him on the cross in the Crucifixion painting she's been
sketching out, but her desire to create 'good' art and a powerful,
beautiful portrayal means that a final painting doesn't see the light of
day for fourteen years.
Over the same years, Douglas's ever-more elaborately designed
urine-based installations bring him increasing fame, prizes and
commissions, while his modelling for Susan Alison, who continues to work
pain and suffering on to the canvas, takes place mostly in the shadows.
This Good Book is a wickedly funny, brilliantly observed novel that
spins the moral compass and plays with notions of creating art.