A Novel by Douglas LockhartSynopsis: This is the story of Nina Proudfoot, a twenty-eight year old Aberdonian Scot brought up in an ultra-religious household, details of which are scattered throughout the book. A child is born to Nina, a boy, and from that moment the story of Nina’s life descends through layers of realisation and confrontation towards a final clash with not only a religiously restrictive past, but also with a socially restrictive present. In this sense Who’s Afraid of Nina Proudfoot is a battleground of ideas both religious and social, the conformity expected in a traditional conception of marriage equally under question. But there is also the question of what it means to be creative, what it means to intercept the moment under the moment and be confronted by an even more immediate present, a sense of reality both personal and collective that recalibrates one’s thoughts and actions. Facing moral and ethical challenges to do with her mother, her brother, her husband and her lover, Nina stumbles toward intellectual and emotional freedom in the face of sometimes overwhelming odds.Douglas Lockhart 20th June 2017 With apology to the late Edward Albee for borrowing part of a very successful play title of his. Table of Contents 1) A Contest of Wills 2) Buckling Down 3) The Lion’s Den 4) The Chain of Circumstance 5) Declaration of War 6) My Father’s Daughter 7) Crushed Words 8) A Shop Girl 9) One Step at a Time 10) Marked Playing Cards 11) The Second Baptism 12) Little Miss Muffet 13) Descent into Darkness 14) Citadel of Lost Hope The real reality, the flickering of seen and unseen actualities, the moment under the moment, can’t be put into words; the most that a writer can do – and this is only rarely achieved – is to write in such a way that the reader finds himself in a place where the unwordable happens off the page. Most of the time it doesn’t happen but trying for it is part of being the hunting-and-finding animal one is. This process is what I care about and what I write is as much process as product. Who’s Afraid of Nina Proudfoot – Download Synopsis and First chapter. |