The Memory of Water

Slade Harris will do anything for a story. He doesn’t think twice about jumping out of a plane or conducting disastrous love affairs to gather material for his writing. But his selfish way seems to be catching up with him: stumbling through his late thirties hopeless and a little drunk, his agent after him like a particularly stubborn strain of venereal disease, Slade has a dazzling, dangerous idea, which sets off a motion of events that will change his life forever.

It’s going to be Slade’s ultimate story, and all he’s hoping for is to survive it.

"Absorbing, chilling, funny and original ... definitely a fresh new voice in South African fiction." - Hamilton Wende

Friday, July 1, 2011

I have an unreachable star.

It’s tempting to go as far as to say that I’ve modelled myself on Gatsby, but
I know it’s not true. I was unhinging my life years before I even picked up a
battered copy. Mostly it’s about being a figment of my own imagination.
Meet Slade Harris, the tragic protagonist of his own life.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Beware of Books

‘Beware of books.

They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink

and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the

spirit of the author within.

Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays …

They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex.’

- Erica Jong, Seducing the Demon

Not Waving But Drowning by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.