A woman sat in a hotel bar, watching the door. Her appearance was neat and tidy: white blouse, fair hair tucked behind her ears. She glanced at the screen of her phone, on which was displayed a messaging interface, and then looked back at the door again. It was late March, the bar was quiet, and outside the window to her right the sun was beginning to set over the Atlantic. It was four minutes past seven, and then five, six minutes past. Briefly and with no perceptible interest she examined her fingernails. At eight minutes past seven, a man entered through the door.
The opening paragraph of the novel immediately situates the reader within what will be a big turning point in the life of the story’s protagonist, Alice Kelleher. Much like her creator, Alice is a successful writer having trouble coping with the dark side of success: the intrusive quality of being famous. Yeah, sure, we all can cry a river for rich and famous people who whine about at least one-half of that equation, but it’s a little different with writers. Writing—at least most writing—is by definition a solitary pursuit that screams out for an especially intense sort of respect of privacy. Alice is recovering from what used to routinely be called a nervous breakdown and what is referred to by exactly that outdated expression by Alice herself. The man who enters the door will exert a new gravitation force on her orbit.
Other than a little criticism and some very long emails, I haven’t written anything now for almost two years. And I think the space in my life has been cleared out at this stage, and it’s empty, and maybe for that reason it’s time for me to fall in love again. I need to feel that my life has some kind of centre, somewhere for my thoughts to return and rest.
A great big chunk of the novel is devoted to the exchange of emails between Alice and her friend Eileen. These emails are really the heart and soul of this book which is less about action than it is about thought; it is more a philosophical treatise than an action-filled story. This particular admission expressed within the privacy of a two-way communique also highlights a major reason behind the emotional breakdown that sent Alice first to a hospital for treatment before she was able to latch onto a great big unpopulated residence she’s housesitting in while the owners look for a buyer. If a writer isn’t selling what they’re writing, they’re still a writer, but is a writer still a writer if they aren’t writing?
I can’t believe I have to tolerate these things – having articles written about me, and seeing my photograph on the internet, and reading comments about myself. When I put it like that, I think: that’s it? And so what? But the fact is, although it’s nothing, it makes me miserable, and I don’t want to live this kind of life. When I submitted the first book, I just wanted to make enough money to finish the next one. I never advertised myself as a psychologically robust person, capable of withstanding extensive public inquiries into my personality and upbringing. People who intentionally become famous – I mean people who, after a little taste of fame, want more and more of it – are, and I honestly believe this, deeply psychologically ill.
At its elemental foundation, the novel is an exploration of the psychological impact of becoming famous. That it contains elements of autobiography goes without saying, of course, but where does the biographical impetus end and the fiction begin? In the seams of the narrative, of course, and it is up to the reader to determine where they are reading what might well perceived to be a cry for help by the author (if, indeed, Alice’s perspective reflects her own) and where they are reading a possible alternative reality constructed by the author for the purpose exploration. A reader should always be careful when it comes to identifying characters in a novel with the writer of that novel even when it seems that the connection is quite definitive.
