Showing results by author "William Blyghton" in All Categories

Noah lives alone, and is obsessed by news of climate change. He doesn’t notice his neighbor at first, but she notices him. She notices that he retreats to his lifeboat moored at the end of his garden for hours on end, and she wonders what he does there. When Noah does meet Molly, she brings a lightness to his life that has been missing for a long time, and he begins to see beauty again.

One morning just before lunch, Caroline stopped breathing. Bereft and alone, a small madness fell upon William. Fleeing to his flat in London, he locked himself away and grew a beard. Some months later, whilst reluctantly attending a dinner party, William saw her, and felt that perhaps providence had plans for him after all. Jennifer, however, saw things differently. Later, and quite by chance - although nothing is by chance - William came to live in Suffolk, in the house by the marsh, and here a sense of ease slowly enveloped him.

When William places Abraham on the page, he thinks he’s in command. After all, isn’t that what authors do--create people to say things for them that they cannot say for themselves? But Abraham is full of surprises and does not always do as he is told. On one level, this is a novel about love and spiritual eldering, but there is also an underlying theme that asks the metaphysical question: Who writes our stories?

Those of us who have studied these things say we are shaped by the stories we tell each other, and by the stories that are told to us. If this is so, then we have to look carefully at these stories, and if we find them unsatisfactory, we need to find others.