by JULIET WATERS

For a novel set in the heyday of Cool Britannia, Jean McNeil's Private View is surprisingly old-fashioned. Or maybe the better word would be timeless. Shelve this in the canon of ex-pat artist literature somewhere in between Mavis Gallant and Ernest Hemingway. Though McNeil satirizes the art scene with the precision of a brain surgeon, this novel is as sad as it is dry - like a witty watercolour of life in a cultural community at the exact point where things are starting to dissipate.

Alex is tragically out of place in the brutally quirky art scene of millennial London. All around her, ambitious artists are straining to outdo each other with the next ironic, disturbing piece. A talented painter, Alex is suffering from a creative block rooted in serious trauma. The sole survivor of a plane crash in the Guatemalan jungle, she has lost much of her memory. She remembers nothing of her boyfriend, Ben, who died in the crash. She does, however, have a memory of human remains that would be the talk of the town if it had been an installation piece at the Tate Modern. Alex's friends and family find her blank, profound grief too much. The only companions who can tolerate it are the cluster of self-absorbed art scenesters she has become attached to.

Her roommate, Conrad, is the golden boy. Gorgeous, promiscuous, relentlessly shallow and a secret manic-depressive, on the surface he is nothing like Alex. Nevertheless, they are both survivors. He left Canada a decade before to escape a punishingly dull family who couldn't deal with his brother's suicide. Like many of the minor characters in Private View, "he has the rigid self-sufficiency of people who have spent a long time in foreign places." Though not an ex-pat, Conrad's old friend Rachel is another portrait in trendiness. A second-generation artist, her father once painted the Beatles. Unfortunately, her cutting edge has become blunt. One of the few performance artists left in the art world, she's gearing up for her last show, Nobody Loves Me. Both are aging, which, in this world, means mid to late 30s. Conrad receives a withering review from a prominent art critic that's enough to make him go off his lithium. Rachel is becoming a rebel who increasingly sounds like a voice from the slush pile of chick lit, moaning about the passing of her childbearing years.

Forget about art as healing. The only promise of rescue for Alex seems to come from two political exiles she has recently met. Erica is a co-worker at a faux-liberal advertising firm that handles accounts of major non-profit organizations. From a rich Guatemalan family, she is one of the rare people who seems genuinely fascinated by Alex's experiences. Fernando, a potential love interest, is the most rooted of all the minor characters. He does, however, have a tendency to be unknowingly condescending. "You don't know what it's like to be alone," he tells her with all the self-assurance of someone who escaped a coup d'état on his own at the age of eight. Alex, who trekked through the Petén jungle by herself with a broken arm for three weeks, does, however, know something about being alone.

When Alex was painting, she was told that her talent was shading. This would be an accurate description of McNeil's talent as well. Told through a series of memories that would be better described as deep-water excursions than flashbacks, there is little plot in this novel, which is more of a meditation than a story. There are times when Alex seems so simultaneously numb and oversensitive, one begins to sympathize with the old friends who have abandoned her. Still, Private View is beautifully and intelligently written, and often deeply and unexpectedly funny. McNeil has a rare gift for casting the perfect light on a culture that is working far too seriously at not taking itself seriously.

Private View by Jean McNeil, Phoenix, pb, 313pp, $14.95