Little Things That Keep Us Together
A novel in progress
“What would you do without Vietnam? Come on – you love that war.”
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Eastbourne, autumn 1972. Jos and Patsy are lately arrived on the coast. He’s teaching art at a prep school; she’s working at a department store and having fun with her new friend Gloria. Jos doesn’t care for Gloria; she’s a bad influence, he reckons – and with Patsy, a little influence goes a long way.
Meanwhile, in a land far distant, a festering war rumbles on; and so, therefore, does Jos's own modest attempt to end it, through the influence of his radical magazine Napalm. |
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A labour of love, is Napalm – and Jos resents the time he has to spend away from it, teaching art to what he regards as a bunch of spoilt posh kids. Even more does he resent being "invited" by Ed Fishley (or Fishcake, as the boys rather catchily call him) to devote a load of his free time to painting sets for his school production of King Lear.
All Jos wants is to do the teaching he’s paid to do – well, that and the spectacular peace mural he’s campaigning to establish on the vacant outer wall of the boot room. Those things aside, his only desire is to be left alone to end the war in Vietnam.
Somehow, though, things don’t go exactly to plan. Patsy, despite his advice, continues to plough her own furrow, while he, despite his own most surly efforts, somehow ends up being recruited after all to Fishcake’s Lear project. Nor is Lear the only thing that hooks him in. Against the odds, he manages to get involved – involved in places and people he really doesn't want involving in, thanks very much. Bbefore long, things are starting to spin out of control...
Inspired by the real-life obnoxiousness of his own prep school art teacher, Robert Cohen’s Little Things That Keep Us Together is the follow-up to the highly-regarded Architecture For Beginners.
Watch this space, yeah?
All Jos wants is to do the teaching he’s paid to do – well, that and the spectacular peace mural he’s campaigning to establish on the vacant outer wall of the boot room. Those things aside, his only desire is to be left alone to end the war in Vietnam.
Somehow, though, things don’t go exactly to plan. Patsy, despite his advice, continues to plough her own furrow, while he, despite his own most surly efforts, somehow ends up being recruited after all to Fishcake’s Lear project. Nor is Lear the only thing that hooks him in. Against the odds, he manages to get involved – involved in places and people he really doesn't want involving in, thanks very much. Bbefore long, things are starting to spin out of control...
Inspired by the real-life obnoxiousness of his own prep school art teacher, Robert Cohen’s Little Things That Keep Us Together is the follow-up to the highly-regarded Architecture For Beginners.
Watch this space, yeah?
Like to know more about Little Things That Keep Us Together? Contact Robert Cohen at [email protected]
