ANON – Summary
The novel is a retelling of the myth of the Minotaur in the form of a detective story. Theseus is a corporate investigator on loan to the local police to find an unusual Midnight Rambler active in a large city park. Ariadne’s motives for helping him are ambiguous, caught as she is between her feelings for her half-brother and her reasons for attaching herself to Theseus. Pasiphaë is involved, too. Her interest in Theseus is dubious, a compulsion that could well result in the creation of another monster. Theseus has no choice but to take the assignment, his career has been put in jeopardy by the publicity surrounding his last job. But he has talent, and it has been hinted that success this time will put him in line for significant advancement.
The novel is narrated by Dionysos, once man and now god, as an updated performance of a perennial drama he is obliged to stage until his characters get their parts right. He has problems with our language, but he presses on as best he can, patiently explaining his more obscure insights and apologising as need be for what he fears we might see as the barbarous excesses of his story-telling.
The plot remains as simple as Ovid has it, the reader’s interest is engaged instead with the question of motivation. Why did Theseus volunteer? He wouldn’t tell what happened in the Labyrinth and he dumped Ariadne fairly quickly. But, then, didn’t she fall for him fairly quickly? What about Pasiphaë, what’s a man compared with a bull? And most of all, the Minotaur himself – more sinned against, perhaps? Dionysos gives us the god’s-eye view, though he knows very well that telling the truth is more difficult than most of us think.
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THE TESTAMENT OF EVE – Introduction
To write The Testament of Eve required a level of release hitherto unknown to me. Usually, control of a work is maintained at the technical level – plausibility, expressibility, thresholds of knowledge and boredom – but here even these controls had to be surrendered to the requirements of inspiration. The result? A comic masterpiece? Gross indulgence? A profound revelation? As for me, I still laugh, grin, smile, chortle, holler in memory. But I would say that, wouldn't I?
Enjoy it – there's goodness in it!
THE TESTAMENT OF EVE – Summary
The novel is a comedy of omissions that revolves around the little-noted fact that, according to Genesis, Adam was only the second person to die, and the first to die a natural death. The story opens with Adam two years abed, his descendents forced to labour in his stead, his wife to dance attention on him. Eve determines to find a cure for Adam’s condition, but discovers that the man who might hold the key is one marked by a knowledge that all fear to know, though all are curious to learn. This man is Cain, the ruler of the city on the plain.
So Eve sets off to meet him. The result is chaos as two families encounter one another. Old memories are dredged up, old woes lived, but new possibilities are revealed, as nine hundred years of evasion and amnesia are literally torn away. Most seek new hideouts, some reveal surprising awareness and even more surprising equanimity. Only Eve, driven perhaps by the exigencies of a composition she undertakes out of unsuspected motives, seems aware of deeper memories, deeper truths, especially of a deeper knowledge hidden in some appalling event in the beginning, where both a profound loss and an inspiring gift await her side by side for ever.
As a comedy of omissions there are, as might be expected, some obscurities, but given the popularity of the Adam and Eve story readers should be able to supply most of the answers themselves. The comedy is Aristophanic and so direct, characters graphic but open to development as the story unfolds, Eve untiring, the ending as happy as can be in the circumstances, everyone getting at least what they are capable of accepting.
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=OR= Introduction
=OR= is the twelfth novel in the series. It was completed in late 1998 at the end of a baffling creative process in which the work grew a sentence at a time over many months. There was of course need for some editing and rewriting, but not nearly as much as might be expected in the circumstances.
=OR= marks the culmination of the third cycle of novels, the cycle dealing with the Social, and looks forward to the fourth and last cycle, which will deal with the Individual. These works have yet to be written, but in =OR= the shadow of the Ego, the true darkness in our human lives, can be discerned in Ossie Rising and his disciples.
=OR= Summary
=OR= is the logo of Rising Transport Services, but it only incidentally contains the initials of its late boss, Ossie Rising. Ossie was a respected businessman and the celebrity philanthropist, who was known to millions of viewers for the =OR= gold-painted truck that brought much-needed aid to many of the world’s most recent trouble spots. Ossie disappeared a few years ago after attending a poetry reading in Brighton, while on stopover en route to Sarajevo.
His wife, Cissy, now has control of the business, and has almost reached the point where she can cope with the responsibility of management and the burden of command. It is a lonely task for her, eased to some extent by a loyal staff and the unfailing support of Totty, the long-serving accountant and now her chief advisor.
There is a problem. Ossie had a brother, Zed, who surrendered his share of =OR= to go out into the broad brave world to, well, discover that he could not cut it with the serious sharks, could not make the billion, bag the big bird, hold the mile high. Now he’s back with the company, Transport Manager, older but more hungry now that he knows what he’s missing. No coincidence that =OR= trucks are increasingly subject to drug squad investigations in many countries. No secret that Zed regrets having surrendered his right to his share of the ownership of a still lucrative business.
This is the position at present. Now it seems that Ossie might not be dead after all, that he might well be on his way back. Ossie resurgens might resolve some problems, but he might also create some new ones. Following the lead here is a delicate matter, a matter both of uncovering the truth and keeping it at bay. This will be the task of the Rising offspring, Nubs, fatboy geek with unsavoury habits and unsavoury friends. Nubs will be the one to worm out secrets and lose them all again if that is required.
Ossie comes back, alright, looking like something that survived an autopsy, sounding like something that the sixties left behind, coming on like something a new millennium could do without. Ossie will provide the solution to his dear wife’s problem.
Ossie will provide the solution to everyone’s problem, that is if anyone can work out what the problem is.
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