As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, my publisher and I recently talked for over an hour about whether I should make some last minute changes in my upcoming novel, Trompe l’Oeil. She was concerned about the book’s complexity and whether or not I should give the reader more clues. “Your work isn’t a beach read, Caroline, ” she concluded before signing off.
I admit, my last two novels, Gothic Spring and Trompe l’Oeil are complex. Characters are caught in a series of events which force them to descend deeply into their thoughts. Sometimes their notions of what’s real and what’s false becomes confused. The ambiguity in my work is deliberate. We live in a world that is so interconnected that we may not always know what’s virtual and what’s real, what’s true and what’s false. We are governed by bureaucracies that are non-responsive and we are affected by corporate shenanigans — like the housing market debacle, over which we have no control but which impact us greatly. In sum, I write about the angst of feeling manipulated without knowing who’s pulling the strings.
For those of you who plan to read my latest novel, Trompe l’Oeil, here’s a clue to the plot: “irony’s central proposition—that every truth must be able to accommodate its own contradiction.” (“Death’s Triumph” by Vince Passaro, Harper’s Magazine, 10/12, pg. 83.)
(Courtesy of longevityrules.blogspot.com)
