3: Overwhelming Physicality 1992–1995
Chapter 3 of my 2005 PhD Thesis ‘A Journey of Integration’
Overwhelming physicality 1992–1995
After Correspondence I turned my attention to a different reading of physicality and, perhaps taking direction from the damp sensualities at the end of the first book, began to imagine the body and its potential beyond flesh, in my second novel Water¹. With the inorganic substance H20 as my reference point, I constructed a conceit around water and its effect on the human imagination. Where Correspondence had focused on the inorganic via metal and plastics, Water explored its penetration into human sensibilities.
In the first novel I had set myself the technical challenge of engaging the reader in a kind of pseudo-interactive narrative, experimenting with the device of fiction, and the resulting book had attracted a positive if very specialist critical reception. But I wanted a wider readership for my second novel and it was this desire to broaden my audience which led me to embed a simple storyline into a complex set of narratives about water, undersea life, the ocean, loss, longing and desire. The themes of Water are commonplace — divorce, motherhood, isolation, reconciliation — but the real interest for me lay in the opportunity to look for new ways to write about water, a somewhat obscure ambition which…
