Doxa

met wrote:Here's an 'alt' mockup that I did ... pretty rough....

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​Set against the backdrop of the 1970’s, when rock ’n roll energized the world and made us believe in tomorrow, ​Naught’s Had is a romance that bites back. Everyone knows Alex.... He’s charming, good looking, and gets a rush out of life — and women. With Kim, he finds an incredible rush in loving her. He has to choose, but finds ways not to. With Alex, Kimberly’s tasted heaven, and doesn't care what hell she has to go through. The story conveys the truth about a love that does not ‘fit neatly’ together, where no one is right, while playing out the complexities of two ordinary people and their choices about how to love, and not love, each other.


AUTHOR'S COMMENTS

“My novel is about passion, longings, fears. It is about not knowing how to love but loving anyway. It is about social pressures. It is about letting love be whatever it is. It is about holding on and holding back. It is about games people play. It is about the interplay between love and fear. It is loud. It is urgent. It is young. It is frustrating. It has something to say about being alive.

“The book is built on an experiential sense of form, not a conceptual one. There is no narrative voice outside the perspective of the characters, and none of the perspectives are raised above the others. No one is right; they are merely experiencing, and, in that, discovering. Life appears on the pages in all it's everyday, unsophisticated glory. And, like life itself, the novel does not resolve its tensions.”

‘Naught’s Had’ is the story of Kimberly and Alex, two ordinary, unsophisticated young people, set in the 1970’s. It is a romance that bites back. Against the backdrop of the 70’s, when rock ’n roll energized the world and made us believe in tomorrow, the story plays out the complexities of two people, and their choices about how to love, and not love each other



AUTHOR'S COMMENTS:

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— 27 —

One look and he saw that last time was still in her eyes, in her smile – even more alive now than it had been that night, as if time kept up the drunkenness, as if she didn’t know (didn’t want to know) that he’d sobered up with the day. He smiled to himself – he’d expected her to come looking for more of the same, expected her to try to tie him to that. But she was dreaming, and he knew how to wake her up to a few of the realities of life. He left the door open for her and went back into the house. He sat down. She stood halfway into the living room. “So what do you want?” As if he didn’t know – she didn’t know, she wouldn’t admit it to her to herself. But her smile was gone. He smiled.

“I phoned. You said to come over.”

“You didn’t say what you wanted on the phone. I thought you’d tell me when you got here.” I want to get laid. I like good sex. What else is there? – she wouldn’t say it but that was all there was, and she was here because she didn’t get it anywhere else.

“I didn’t know I had to have a reason to come here.”

“Didn’t you? Well, it doesn’t make any difference to me anyway.” And he lit up a cigarette, yawning. She came into the room, sitting down on the chair opposite him. Watching him, disturbing him. He liked that, and he liked the hint of fear in her eyes too.

He looked at the television. “What’s this?”

She was being polite – hadn’t learned yet that politeness wouldn’t do it for him.

He shrugged. “Some show.”