A
Perfect Square is in essence a book about ‘flow’.
About being completely immersed and fully present in a creative task. About how
the ego, with all of its anxieties, prejudices and foibles, inhibits that flow.
The original inspiration for the story came
through my daughter Elizabeth Blackthorn’s Honours thesis in Music. I was
helping her with her research design. I have a PhD in Western Esotericism and
I’m a qualified and non-practicing Astrologer. Coming up with a research
proposal is always a challenge. Elizabeth wanted to do something original and
unusual. I suggested the idea of tracking the outer planets of the solar system
over a period of years, and then translating their geometric interactions with
each other first into language, then music. Imagine how thrilled I was when she
said yes!
It wasn’t long before I started to sense
there was a lot more than a thesis in the idea.
There’s a lot of Elizabeth’s thesis that
found its way into A Perfect Square. Not
least the idea of ‘flow’. I came to writing late in life, and to a large extent
it was my own inhibitions that prevented me from picking up the pen. When I
did, and words did flow, I quickly lost confidence. I had no clear idea that to
get past that point of stalling, you need to go off and learn the skills and
techniques of the craft. For decades I approached writing as though it was an
ability you either had or you didn’t. Not as a craft and an art to be learned.
My daughter is much wiser. She’s worked
hard at becoming a pianist and composer. So has protagonist, Ginny Smith. In A Perfect Square Ginny agrees to compose
nine musical pieces to accompany nine artworks produced by her mother, Harriet,
and culminating in an exhibition. The collaboration involves the creation and
application of a moon model as a source of inspiration. I invited Elizabeth to
write Ginny’s pieces, or her own interpretation of what some of those pieces
might be. The music she’s composed was inspired by A Perfect Square, which seems to close not a square but a circle.
Although this music is nothing like the progressive rock she wrote for her
thesis. It’s sweet jazz, mellifluous in places, in others angular, poised. (A
link to access her recordings will appear in the front-end pages of the novel.)
Ginny and Elizabeth share a sentiment, a
resonance. And A Perfect Square is
not only homage to creative flow; it’s a tribute to daughters everywhere, to
the gifts they bring to their mothers.
To say A
Perfect Square poured out of me is an understatement. The story wrote itself.
I woke early every day for months, picked up my pen and wrote, scene after
scene after scene. Might sound trite, but I went with the flow, never
questioning, never looking forward or back, trusting the process. The result is
a story that has its complexities, its twists and turns, and its depths. It
isn’t a simple story. It isn’t a page turner; at least I hope it isn’t, because
my intention was both to entertain and to stimulate the reader to ponder and
reflect.
At the level of sentences, A Perfect Square has a definite rhythm
to it. A beat. The narrative voice is strong. It’s a voice commensurate with
the ideas the book contains, and with the eccentric vibe of Harriet
Brassington-Smythe. (I think there’s a touch of Ad Fab to her. That’s how I
pictured her in my imagination.) It was how the story demanded to be told. But
I think my muse was mocking me through the guise of my character.
A
Perfect Square - the blurb
When pianist Ginny Smith moves back to her
mother’s house in Sassafras after the breakup with the degenerate Garth,
synaesthetic and eccentric Harriet Brassington-Smythe is beside herself. She
contrives an artistic collaboration to lift her daughter’s spirits: an
exhibition of paintings and songs. Ginny reluctantly agrees.
While mother and daughter struggle with the
elements of the collaborative effort, and as Ginny tries to prise the truth of
her father’s disappearance from a tight-lipped Harriet, both are launched into
their own inner worlds of dreams, speculations and remembering.
Meanwhile, another mother and artist,
Judith, alone in a house on the moors, reflects on her own troubled past
and that of her wayward daughter, Madeleine.
Set amid the fern glades and towering
forests of the Dandenong ranges east of Melbourne, and on England’s Devon
moors, A Perfect Square is a literary thriller of remarkable depth
and insight.
Book Trailer
A Londoner originally, Isobel Blackthorn currently resides in Melbourne, Australia. She received her BA in Social Studies from the Open University, and has a PhD in Western Esotericism. She has worked as a high school teacher, market trader and PA to a literary agent. Her writing has appeared in Backhand Stories, The Mused, On Line Opinion and Fictive Dream. Other works include the novels, Asylum and The Drago Tree, and the short story collection, All Because of You.
Twitter: @IBlackthorn
Elizabeth Blackthorn
Here’s a link to the music (alternative
progressive rock) that Elizabeth created for her Honours thesis (she got a 1st!)
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