I had this idea a long while ago about writing a novel around a telephone box. My main character is making an important phone call. As he is on the phone a variety of disparate characters go past, all intent on various aspects of their lives. The only way they touch is in happening to go past as the call was being made. This is not that.
But the idea was similar.
This was a real event. My father had just died. I was in his hospital room with his body looking out the window. Outside people were walking past, going about their business, completely unaware. This is that. All those people have a basis in reality – even the most outrageous ones. All life, sex and death.
Introduction
I had the concept for this novel in 1981. It has been festering annoyingly in the back of my mind for decades until I finally found the way of writing it.
Many of the characters in this book are embellishments and adaptations of real people, even myself. It is the same with the events; they too are based on real situations. But this is a work of fiction. It has come out of my imagination. Nothing is completely true. The characters I have created are often composites and much of what takes place has been altered – having said that there is a strong element of fact in nearly all of it – particularly the more unlikely part.
4.0 out of 5 stars Only Connect!Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 July 2018
A very human moment of painful insight and personal crisis launches this intriguing multi-layered story. Several apparently disparate lives are examined through episodic and frankly-confessional first-person accounts which in their very different ways explore the question of how far we are free and how much we are constrained. How are we connected and what if we could see through the eyes of others? The style is fast-flowing, the language direct and uncluttered. As the old 50s cop show proclaimed: All human life is here! In this case, life and death …
I began writing this in February while on the cruise ship Magellan going up the coast of Australia. I completed the first rough draft in March while cruising around Vietnam. Opher Goodwin 25.3.2017