NEW BOOK RELEASE
'What Will Happen To You?'
“ I’m sure I could have been quicker but I found I needed to read it slowly, and bit by bit. I think I usually skim read but I couldn’t with this.
Post modernism, the self and the other-self, no empirical truth just context, meta fiction, the unreliable narrators … the unreliable author. None of which I knew much about. I really enjoyed this. And I was fascinated by the way it folds in on itself, unrelenting in the parallel streams of conscious and unconscious thoughts, and the way you explore longing and unrequited desire. Bleak, certainly, but also adroit. It is complex and layered and I found reading it was a bit like a hall of distorted mirrors. Intriguing and destabilising. It's an epic read and dare I say a demanding read.
I especially loved the part with Robbie in the mines. And Sophie in Paris. And the different cities with their very different energies but which sort of melded as well. And the city heat and the ominous darkened spaces like cells. And the brooding feeling of it all. I’m in awe of your intelligence and the black humour that shines through it.”
… Sarah Sutherland - Actor, Producer. Melbourne, Australia.
'Doing Life in Paradise'
‘It wasn’t for the ordinary to ponder the extraordinary; there was enough to do to wrestle with the everyday’.
Doing Life in Paradise explores the impact and ripple effect of trauma on a group of strangers inextricably linked by, and witness to a tragic accident.
The novel is a surreal voyeuristic journey into the minds and lies of its larger than life characters, each trapped in their own struggle for survival and redemption. Ruby hopes for love, but her destiny is controlled by a malicious spider. Peter laments the loss of love, but prefers to discuss it with Mr Dishwasher. Madeleine discovers rapture while counting down her periods. Hawkey knows if you lie to your psychologist, you are still telling the truth. Tommy is a killer. And Flat 5 lady is beyond saving.
Through the eyes of its flawed characters, and clipped acerbic prose Doing Life in Paradise exposes the absurdity of life, and dependence on hope to find meaning within life’s disinterest. But how can life in a city called Paradise feel anything but cruelly ironic, how can it not be anything but a life sentence?
The novel explores the peculiar places life can take us, while exposing the curious strategies we each employ in order to survive.
“…hyper-literate and intellectually nimble.”
— Kerryn Goldsworthy
Buy Now
Through your preferred on-line retailer or bookstore.
ISBN:PB: 978-1-910782-53-8 EB:978-1-910782-54-5
…Ruby felt she was always waiting. She waited for light after dark. She waited for protection and love – especially love. She waited for her life to start and the white noise to end. She waited and dreaded the day when she would have to confront the spider. She lived with the anxious feeling that people had to die in order for her to progress up the waiting queue…
Doing Life in Paradise discusses coincidence, synchronicity and the absurdity of life and our dependence on hope in particular. In its clipped, distinctive prose, the novel explores the peculiar places life can take us, while exposing the curious strategies we each employ in order to survive. Through the eyes of its hyper-real characters, the novel searches for meaning, finds surface and routine, and in that, exposes the absurdity of life.
...He thought maybe Flat 5 Lady would call a doctor for him, but she didn’t. He couldn’t blame her, she was mad herself. It was the flats or it was her life that made her mad. Her life was full of secrets and disappointments. Like all lives in Paradise; everyone was trapped in one way or another, in one secret or another, in one disappointment or another, in one adage or another, in the promise of hope…