A Novel

I would like to point my readers’ attention to a blog — The Art of Life — featuring a wonderful serialized novel. You can find the first chapter, “Start with gratitude”, here. Set in a place that will probably be familiar to readers of this blog, it’s a fast-paced and sharply written mystery/thriller full of intrigue, murder, ghosts, environmentalism and art. In addition to being a brilliant writer and a totally amazing human, the author also happens to be my mother.

And yes, she’s looking for a publisher…

Seawall

Shisa (“Okinawan Lion”)

Origins

“…For the Nuer of the southern Sudan (see Roy Willis’s Man and Beast), ‘all creatures, including man, originally lived together in fellowship in one camp. Dissension began after Fox persuaded Mongoose to throw a club into Elephant’s face. A quarrel ensued and the animals separated; each went its own way and began to live as they are now, and to kill each other. Stomach, which at first lived a life of its own in the bush, entered into man so that now he is always hungry. The sexual organs, which had also been separate, attached themselves to men and women, causing them to desire one another constantly. Elephant taught man to pound millet so that now he satisfies his hunger only by ceaseless labour. Mouse taught man to beget and women to bear. And dog brought fire to man.’”

John Berger, Why Look at Animals? (London: Penguin, 2009), 17-18.

Dog