It’s paperback publication week in the UK for ‘Five Days’ - and one of the many interesting things that have arisen since its initial publication a year ago on both side of the Atlantic (and in France and Korea and many other countries) is how I’ve been told so often by so many readers: “how did you actually come to write about my life?” It is, among the most flattering things an author can hear about his work. As I have noted before on this page, we all read, on one level, to discover that we are not alone. Just as one of the central concerns in my fiction is all that essential quotidian stuff with which we all struggle - the biggest one being ourselves and our manifold contradictions. ‘Five Days’ arose at a period of relative calm after a tumultuous few years in which I weathered a deeply nasty and necessary divorce, had the usual post-marital romantic misadventures that seem to arise in the aftermath of a twenty-fuve year relationship, and gradually re-built the material and psychic structures of my life. Seen retrospectively it was one of the most difficult and important passages I’ve ever negotiated. And when I began ‘Five Days’ one thought possessed me: why do we so often remain in relationships that we know have gone very wrong? And, most tellingly, why do we frequently emotionally shortchange ourselves by staying put? As such, why the book seems to have so connected with so many readers is because it grapples with that immense and crucial problem: the immense dilemma that change brings to all of us. In fact I would posit the thought that the verb ‘to change’ is among the most daunting in any language. Because we all, on some level, want change to arrive in our lives. And yet the most vertiginous aspect to change is the fact that it is, in the end, our decision to change, or to stand still. As such, change is among the most existential of dilemmas.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Apr 2014 14:48:05 +0000
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