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Now available as a paperback for £6.99
cover image © copyright Veronika von Volkova
Evie and Guy: a novel with no words.
When we tell the story of a relationship, we, and it, are judged by what we omit. By design, by ignorance, or just because there are only so many pages and so much time, the blank spaces tell a story every bit as true, as rich, and as important as the print marks meandering through them. Acknowledging that truth, Evie and Guy is the history of a relationship told through the white space of the protagonists’ most solitary act. It comprises simply the dates, times, and duration in seconds (bracketed where the act was interrupted or unclimactic) of every act of masturbation in their lives.
Our lives are so full of joy, despair, individual triumphs and tragedies so vivid they want to scream at the world until they are imprinted there forever in their splendour. But the moment we begin to tell our stories they become trapped in the dullness of a language constructed to reduce our joyful individuality to the whisper of restrained uniformity.
I want to unpick the chains of language that keep each one of our stories prisoner within a patriarchal colonial prison outside of which we cannot conceptualise ourselves until we can conceive and express ourselves in ways that preserve the glorious individuality of each human spirit.
Writing Evie and Guy, I wanted my shackles as author, my commentary on Evie’s life, to be utterly absent so that her life might have every space it is possible to afford it to speak on its own terms, and might also be lived anew with each reading.
After four novels and countless poems and short stories, years of experimenting and thinking, this is finally the book I have always wanted to write, both older woman/younger man heartbreaking love story and contribution to the building of a poetics of hope.
I will be putting a pitch for Evie and Guy forward to the Folio Prize judges should Academy members not call it in first.
Podcasts and other audiovisual media
Books and Booze (an hour of discussion of all things literary)
For Books’ Sake
Reviews of Evie and Guy
Dan Holloway writes a conundrum by Judi Moore
Reading Between the Lines
Flash Fiction and Other Stories Chris Morton’s website
Decoding Static
Write Enough
Articles about Evie and Guy
Silence, Feminism and masturbation
How Do You Write A Novel Without Using Words?
3:AM’s Missing Links features Evie and Guy
Not the Granta
How to Market a Book that Fits no Category
Interview with Sabotage Reviews
Finding the Emotional Heart of your story
In print – featured in Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner
3:AM in Pseuds Corner
Other articles that may be of interest
I tried masturbating to music instead of porn
