Multidimensional Literary fiction A very different kind of love story. Mysticism, Divinity, surrealism, grief, and resolution When Paul Garner begins preparing his part for a sixth form play, he forms a close friendship with Bethany who is to play a goddess. Because of an abnormally reserved and secretive nature, Bethany has always seemed inaccessible to those about her. From being a small boy at primary school, Paul has felt a fascination for Bethany but until now has been unable to befriend her. He begins to learn the extent of her strange imagination and becomes haunted by the doubt that she herself may be a product of his imagination. Soon after the performances of the play begin, they are abruptly cut short and he is cruelly separated from the girl he has come to love. His English teacher visits him in his grief and reveals the true origin of the play, which is entitled Tales of Jonathan. He suggests to Paul that by entering the world of the play and attempting to change the course of the narrative, Paul may be able to find Bethany as the goddess whom she plays. Paul sets out on a journey into the tales of Jonathan, allowing the power of his imagination to take him into worlds inaccessible to rational and material thought. He becomes lost within and between the tales, where characters change one into another. Place and time lose significance. Experiences are revisited in different lights. Attempting to redirect the tales, he finds that they merge and become intertwined so that the places, though seemingly different, share common themes. His ability to distinguish between himself, and Daniel, the character he plays, becomes obliterated. He is lost within the narrative, which often moves in directions not of his choosing. The reader accompanies Paul through the tales and between fiction and reality, becoming lost with him. Tales of Jonathan is a self exploration of one persons mind, culminating in his discovery of truth in the deepest chamber. By transcending the restrictions of reason, he finds a new reality. Dreams which have no end are no longer dreams. His previous loss and grief have become the fiction; the tales of Jonathan are now his reality. It is a story about the power of faith and love. I believe that with reflective thought, the reader will find it a challenging and rewarding book. I, as its writer, have certainly found it to be. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. When I have finished my breakfast, the sun is shining. I had toast and coffee. There was the banana too; half eaten, I dropped it in the metal container provided and carried my mug of coffee down the four concrete steps to the garden which sings lazily, the dew almost dry. I shall go as far as the bench; here I sit, a new day begun, yet early still. There are swallows: there are swifts like drifting anchors high on the pale sky. It was always summer once: it is now but there was a time when seasons battled against each other, none holding power for long. The garden was a wasteland, littered with the carnage of conflict. I would stand on the frozen steps, not knowing what to expect; I would descend warily, listening for birdsong, looking for buds and shoots but sorrowing in my deafness and blindness. Some might call it a wasteland now: that which springs from the earth, remains untamed. Trees, shrubs and grasses wrestle for supremacy: all is a compromise. I sit on my bench, my coffee still hot and this new day formed in the wake of dawn. This is my dawn, I told myself. It is a part of the garden, hatching from darkness, spreading to envelope my world. This is my dawn, this part of it within my garden. Dawn has passed; the sun is climbing within my dome of sky. I do not remember my arrival at the house: perhaps I was too young. Perhaps I have always lived here. I call him Jack; he works in my garden. Sometimes he comes daily but there have been weeks or months in succession when I have not seen him; he may have been there but hidden from my scrutiny or invisible in my lethargy. When I was a boy I called him Uncle Jack. He does not interfere with the garden: he supervises its development. I have seen him wheeling his barrow through the snow; I have seen him emerging from the shed after a heavy fall of rain, to stand as if ascertaining the extent of change. He must be an old man now. When he dies, I shall bury him in my garden. I have a place marked out: he will not be forgotten. My earliest memory of him is when the garden was no more than a patch of coarse grass, grown through with thistle and dandelion and contained by a wooden fence; beyond, was the moor, at first flat but climbing ever more steeply to hills and mountains. The garden gate was kept locked. Whenever Jack arrived or left, he took the key from his jacket pocket. He closed the gate behind him, relocked it and replaced the key in his pocket. Often I would see him approach, far off and indistinct in form; I would know and would stand waiting at the gate. Sometimes he would leave and I would not see him go and I would scan the distance, identifying or imagining his figure until it vanished. Sometimes he would be gone and neither my eyes nor my imagination had discerned his departing figure: then, more than ever, I felt his absence. His shed was little more than a large box against the fence; it was constructed from planks of varied lengths and breadths and roofed with a jigsaw of felt and tin. The single window was curtained by a sack, which he would detach from one side to admit light and to look out. In his absence, the door was locked with the key of the garden gate; I do not recall another key. I would sit on the concrete steps to watch him repair his shed, following damage by conflicts of the seasons. I remember an occasion on which he arrived to find much of the roof torn away and many planks displaced, leaving no side complete; through the gaps, I could see him salvaging tools and usable debris. Before leaving to fetch materials for repair, he locked the door, which continued to hang without function, swinging back and forth in the wind. When I was a small boy, Uncle Jack would show me changes in the garden: a new shoot breaking the soil or a branch broken by a storm. Though I longed to enter the shed, I was never invited; whenever I followed him to the door, he would turn shaking his head and close the door behind him. If we both happened to be in the garden when a heavy shower of rain began to fall, he retreated to his shed to shelter and I, to the house. Sometimes a gift or new item was delivered; usually it bore a label revealing his identity as the donor. One not bearing a label, was an aquarium: it was brought to the house one morning. A man carried it from his van. He brought a stand and several pieces of equipment. He set up the aquarium and poured gravel into it. He placed beautifully shaped chunks of bogwood in the gravel and arranged rounded rocks and pebbles. He filled the tank with water and added carefully measured amounts of other liquids. When he switched on the power, the whole room changed; even with no plants or fish, that little world shone out from emptiness€€.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 03:28:04 +0000
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