[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-115613-en":3,"doc-seo-115613-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":92},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":11,"is_downloadable":11,"audit_status":11,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},115613,687207024478,"Liam","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_a8503ba1806abce46bf441b54a3ca4cd",1,"Story & Novel","Opening Night - Sara Baume","Opening Night follows a narrator who, after a long retreat from society and from formal Catholic ceremonies, reluctantly attends the closing party of a group art exhibition. Late in a pandemic winter, the narrator is unsettled by the village’s staged formality while observing friends, children, and the improvised gallery space built from salvaged materials. Through careful attention to paintings and to Sue’s way of living, the story explores intimacy, artistic attention, and the emotional dissonance between social performance and personal feeling.","[OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com)  \nOpening Night  \nSara Baume  \n[OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com)  \nI have always been what you could call a loner. If I could have met myself, it would have been wonderful, but I never met such a person.  \nALICE NEEL  \n[OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com)  \nContents  \nTitle Page  \nEpigraph  \nThe Closing Party PART I  \nPART II  \nOpening Night  \nIllustration Credits  \nAbout the Author  \nAlso by Sara Baume  \nCopyright  \n[OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com)  \nThe Closing Party  \nI met Mollie’s paintings before I met Mollie.  \nMy friend Sue had organised a group exhibition in her partially constructed eco-house and in the capacious outbuilding where she and her young family had been living temporarily. Susan Montgomery’s property was agricultural land that had been rezoned, and sat on the outskirts of a village distinguished by an ornate signpost with long iron arms pointing visitors to nearby places of greater interest than the village itself. There was a church enclosed by a high wall constructed entirely from vertically stacked stoneslabs, and every time I pass this wall I wonder about the man – it had been aman, surely – who chose to stand each slab on its side and line them up like dominoes instead of laying them flat, facing the sky, and why on earth he had chosen this arduous, aesthetically perplexing method. When I arrived in Rathbarry, late in the afternoon, for the closing party, I was taken aback to find cars parked at awkward angles throughout the village and people informal clothes trickling out of the church, standing around talking to eachother and posing for photographs. There were little girls dressed in white gowns and gloves, little boys dressed in suits and bow ties, and for a moment I was addled by the bustle of synthetic surfaces, satin, gauze, ringlets. It was the second year of the pandemic, and I had grown unaccustomed to crowds, fearful even. After a long hiatus from society, and an even longer one from the ceremonies of the Catholic Church, I found the whole scene bizarre and disturbing. I felt as if I had interrupted a mass cult wedding of young children. I drove past the church four times, dodging scattered families. At last, I noticed a gap in the hawthorn hedge. Nothing immediately identified it as an entrance, no gate or letter box or cattle grid, but for the exhibition closing party Sue had tied a pink balloon to a branch, and the wind had lifted it up, and it bobbed on its ribbon, earnestly.  \nSue’s driveway was narrow and descending. Down between the house and outbuilding, the crowd was thinner than up on the road. People I knew but had not seen in years, and people I had never met but whose faces were somehow familiar, milled about and sat on horizontal logs delicately clutching long-stemmed glasses, laughing and taking turns to speak. There were children here too, but these were dressed in less formal clothes, crinkled and dusty. They shouted and played in the long grass with a sheepdog, and I was ashamed of myself for not being able to recall their names. Sue’s dog, fat with matted hair, was called, I remembered clearly, Luna. There was flimsy paper bunting and a photocopied map and steppingstones through the grass leading to the tin-roofed shed that had been emptied out and painted brilliant white to resemble a gallery space. There was a rickety door that looked as if it had originally been attached to a wardrobe, or perhaps an en-suite bathroom. Most of the shed’s construction materials appeared to have been salvaged from skips. The structure was a patchwork of dismantled buildings all together elevated a foot above the ground as though a flood was expected. Panes of glass and panels of Perspex with varying levels of opacity formed the facade. Some were ridged, others were yellowed with age. The light they let in was dim and unevenly distributed. Boards of insulation foam held in place by timber struts formed the ceiling, and the floor was bare plywood, mottled by foot","cbCaieFE99Vt269y","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaieFE99Vt269y","pdf",11026864,6,207,"English","en",105,"# The Closing Party\n## Arriving at Rathbarry\n## The Improvised Gallery Space\n## Art, Intimacy, and Obligation","[{\"question\":\"Why does the narrator feel disturbed at the closing party?\",\"answer\":\"The narrator has grown unaccustomed to crowds and finds the formal, ceremony-like setting bizarre and unsettling, as if they have interrupted a cult-style wedding.\"},{\"question\":\"What is special about the exhibition venue?\",\"answer\":\"The paintings are displayed in an improvised gallery space in a shed-like outbuilding, built from salvaged materials and finished with plywood, Perspex panels, and dim, uneven light.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the narrator typically come to sincerely like contemporary art?\",\"answer\":\"The narrator explains that they tend to like contemporary artworks only after establishing some version of intimacy with the artist who made them.\"}]","Opening Night - Sara Baume | PDF",1785475195,319,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":24,"language":23,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":87,"head_meta":89,"extra_data":91,"updated_unix":28},"opening-night-sara-baume","",{"@graph":36,"@context":86},[37,54,69],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,48,51],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":11},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":47},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":49,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":50},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/story-novel/",3,{"item":52,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":53},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/opening-night-sara-baume/115613/",4,{"url":52,"name":13,"@type":55,"author":56,"headline":13,"publisher":58,"fileFormat":61,"inLanguage":23,"description":14,"dateModified":62,"datePublished":63,"encodingFormat":61,"isAccessibleForFree":64,"interactionStatistic":65},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":57},"Person",{"url":41,"name":59,"@type":60},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-08-17","2026-07-31",true,{"@type":66,"interactionType":67,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":68},"ViewAction",{"@type":70,"mainEntity":71},"FAQPage",[72,78,82],{"name":73,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":75},"Why does the narrator feel disturbed at the closing party?","Question",{"text":76,"@type":77},"The narrator has grown unaccustomed to crowds and finds the formal, ceremony-like setting bizarre and unsettling, as if they have interrupted a cult-style wedding.","Answer",{"name":79,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":80},"What is special about the exhibition venue?",{"text":81,"@type":77},"The paintings are displayed in an improvised gallery space in a shed-like outbuilding, built from salvaged materials and finished with plywood, Perspex panels, and dim, uneven light.",{"name":83,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":84},"How does the narrator typically come to sincerely like contemporary art?",{"text":85,"@type":77},"The narrator explains that they tend to like contemporary artworks only after establishing some version of intimacy with the artist who made them.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":52,"og:type":88,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":59,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":90,"canonical":52},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":24},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":93},[94,97,101,105,110,114,119,124,129,132,136],{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":95,"slug":96},90,"story-novel",{"id":47,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":98,"show_sort_weight":99,"slug":100},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":53,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":102,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":106,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":107,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":109},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":20,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":111,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":120,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":121,"show_sort_weight":122,"slug":123},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":125,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":126,"show_sort_weight":127,"slug":128},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":130,"show_sort_weight":127,"slug":131},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":133,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":134,"show_sort_weight":133,"slug":135},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":137,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":138,"show_sort_weight":106,"slug":139},19,"General","general"]