Leprosy, anyone?

I like the idea that if you’re gonna be sick, you should go the whole hog. Like, don’t just have a slight cold. That’s boring. Get the Black Death. Fungal Necrosis. Mexican Jumping Fever. (At about this point you’re thinking, how disrespectful! What about all the people who really have those dreadful things?)

Well yeah, you have a point, but allow me some drama. Anyway, for the last two weeks I’ve had this unidentified virus involving chills, sweats, headaches and a face like a spotted balloon, and I can’t say it’s been fun, but it does make you think. For instance, if you had a choice would you rather feel bad or look bad? Is it better to have a fatal but aesthetically pleasing (up to a point) illness like TB (I’m thinking Lady of the Camellias, Keats) or a temporary but disfiguring one (measles, for instance?). Nobody ever seduced anyone while they had an active case of the measles…

Another thought bubble. Do we blog for attention, or because we have something to say? I mean, WordPress Prompts. Like our minds are so empty that we need WP to provide helpful suggestions for something to talk about. My long held view? Got nothing to say? Then don’t say it. Not that it stops me...

Anyway. I have a new novel out. Technically a novella. It’s about death. Specifically, the line between death and life (not so easily defined, I’m inclined to think, as Sesame Street would have us believe in their hit ditty, Some of these things are not like the Others!). It’s also about passion, and loss, and finding something to live for. More about the story below, but I want to share some thoughts about why I wrote it. As many of you know, my son died a few years ago and since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about death, grief and – for want of a better word – the afterlife. Why did it happen? Where have you gone? Can it be really be that I’ll never see you again? Is there some way to tell you, to speak to you…? These are all questions I’ve asked myself. And so does Eurydice, my protagonist, when her husband Orpheus slips into the cold, night-dark water of Sydney Harbour on his thirtieth birthday and drowns, seemingly of his own free will.

Then, as the months follow one another, we who’ve lost someone think, ‘How can I keep on living?’ Losing a lover – someone for whom you feel an overwhelming, even obsessive passion – is different to losing a child, and that’s something I wanted to explore in the book. Orpheus is a tremendous talent, a beautiful, reckless, do-nothing-by-halves kind of guy, and to some extent Eurydice lives in his shadow. For her, then, his death offers a choice – obliteration or some kind of reinstatement of what it is to be herself, as an artist, as an individual, alone. And then there’s the issue of what death is, and what life is. Is it simply a rolling over of organic matter, a matter of neurons ceasing to fire, or are we part of something much larger and less immediately comprehensible? Do we struggle with the concept of mortality because like King Lear we can’t endure the thought, ‘Thou’lt come no more, / Never, never, never, never, never’. Or do we intuitively understand a greater truth about the way things are?

Well, anyway, here’s the blurb. If you’d like a review copy, just leave me a comment with your email address and I’ll send you a link.

In the house of God there are many telephones.

Incoming calls only.

A Portrait Under Water, is a modern take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. It’s a story of death, grief, and the unbreakable bonds of passionate love.

Eurydice’s husband Orpheus, a well-known musician, disappears from a party boat in Sydney Harbour on his thirtieth birthday. Three days later police recover his drowned body.

Desperate with grief, Eurydice tries to find a reason for his apparent suicide. The dead provide no answers, and the theories of friends and accusers – depression, obsessive love, a drunken accident – don’t satisfy her.

Fleeing a bitter, blaming mother in law and a morbidly curious press, Eurydice flies to Spain. There she explores the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead – but Orpheus is hard to reach. Wherever the dead may be, they don’t speak our language, and the other side is a long way off.

You can find A Portrait Under Water on Amazon here, and at a range of online bookstores.  For an excerpt, click here or use Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ feature!

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