6/5/2023 0 Comments Time and time again novelMoorhouse himself has said that ‘the beauty of being a writer is that we play many parts’. Leonard and Edith have a passion, an intensity, an attention to detail, what you might term a nerdery, that is richly characterful and one of Cold Light’s great qualities is the way in which its characters are given to enthusiasms. Neither Edith, nor my fictional Leonard are ‘likeable’ exactly, much as I adore them both, and I’m of the view that likeable characters sound a death knell for fiction. Like Edith, Leonard could be boring and pompous. It was no surprise to me, really, when researching this lecture, that I discovered Frank Moorhouse carries 3 x 5 inch cards everywhere he goes, in a leather custom made wallet. In the current draft of my novel a fictional character called Bella jots various scenes of a novel she is writing down on 3 x 5 inch cards. A man who could be both cruel and deeply romantic, and, while not as queer as Edith, he certainly surrounded himself with queer acquaintances, living the life of a Bloomsbury man, a man who was in, to quote a phrase oft-used by Edith, in a Bloomsbury Marriage. A bureaucrat of sorts, committed to public service. I am currently writing a novel about Leonard Woolf and Woolf was, like Edith Campbell Berry, an odd fish. One of my reasons for going back to it is, as is often the case with writers, self-interest. I have returned to Cold Light, the third novel in the Edith Trilogy by Frank Moorhouse, time and time again.
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