Fragments

This chapter starts with a collage of word pictures representing the aftermath of the House’s actions. Maybe it comes from watching so much tv when I was younger, but my prose writing does seem to be very visual. In fact, I knew the stories of many literary classics, not because I’d read them, but because I’d seen them on the telly. I did go and read quite a lot of them afterwards, but even as I read the books, I’d see the characters from the tv version. Patrick Troughton, magnificently evil as Quilp, Alan Badel as The Count of Monte Christo, Frank Finlay as Jean Valjean. A Disney film version of any story or fairytale tends, for good or bad, to eclipse any other interpretation. But even on audio, I still find myself trying to create extraordinary sights; sights that the telly could never afford. These days I watch precious little television. All presenters who believe they’re more important than the programme they’re presenting should be sentenced to watch endless loops of lifestyle programmes. And one particular garden designer, who prefers concrete to plants, should have been strangled at birth by a clematis.

The Doa-no-nai-heya Monastery is the retreat featured in the previous book in the NA series, Kate Orman’s Japanese epic The Room With No Doors.