Christine Evans
Christine Evans was born in chilly London but spent her childhood in the wide sunny expanse of Perth in western Australia. ‘Cloudless’ is a novel told in streams of poetry, which after the first few pages seems to be the most logical and natural way to dissect the motives and emotions of its protagonists. As Christine explains, the style of the novel was an accident, engendered by a spell at a silent writing retreat in Texas.
It’s a daringly thin literary line to walk –a narrative thread strung together in prose form; I almost hesitated to read it, and yet, once I had plunged in I felt akin to the characters in Evan’s novel spinning out their endless overheated holidays at the local pool – the waters closed over my head and I submitted to the soothing pace of her prose. The comforting rhythm of words hid sharp shocks and poignant reflections.
Evans sucks us down gently into her protagonists lives- triumph and desperation liberally distributed, these are small lives writ large and so they are all our lives .
After the first few pages the prose presentation seems almost perfectly suited to the tales being related – the economy of the format makes expansive pictures in a few lines.
Without being over emotional, deep feeling are succinctly communicated leaving the reader to ponder upon the this perilous business of growing up and growing older and moving on.
Christine Evans talks about ‘Cloudless- a novel in verse’
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