The first draft of my debut novel Godless Cosmologies was finished in a frenzy, quite unlike any I have before experienced. It’s odd, really, that such an urgency overcame me to finish something that perhaps, at the time, would have no immediate impact on my circumstances. But it somehow needed to be done, and in this piece I hope to provide a bit of an insight into how it was.
I don’t recall the time when I decided to write a book. I’m sure there was one. But I cannot pinpoint it. In fact, there may have not been a time at all. Some other worldly force may have simply gravitated me towards such an endeavour. I was jotting down notes, I suppose. But casting aside any attempt at planning I may have had, I found myself, towards the end of my master’s degree year, frantically trying to finish a first draft, and finish it I did, perhaps to the deprivation of my sanity for a short while.
A Gothic, Literary Fantasy Novel
The subject matter of the book is less easy to trace, but I can come close to pinpointing the heart of it. The novel is a gothic, literary fantasy following an asylum patient, Pear, in the aftermath of his parents’ death. Now, I am fortunate to have not experienced the loss of someone so close and dear to me. So why is this the story I found myself writing? Well, it is the story that gives rise to two sensations: those of sudden shock and isolation. I may not have experienced extreme loss, but I had experience sudden shock and isolation. For a couple of months or so I found myself as a mental health inpatient, some years ago, and though it was quite a willing circumstance, there was a paraesthesia—a shock—that came with that experience, and, undoubtedly, a feeling of isolation. I suppose, having not experienced grief, I now imagine that such an emotion may evoke such feelings too.
Giving Voice to What We Don’t Understand
But this only brings me down the road en route to the novel’s heart: it’s epicentre. I do not claim to even know what this is, and I somewhat delight in not knowing, for I believe that writing can help give voice to that within us that we do not understand. But we can unpick, we can explore, and we can question. And so in the unpicking I find myself considering the direction of the novel: Pear encounters another patient, Mystery, who is subject to delusions of some description. At first everything appears well, especially when Pear journeys to a fantasy underwater world where he spends time with a seemingly omniscient octopus. In Mystery, Pear also seems to find a potential replacement for his mother, to whom he was so attached. But with Mystery there is also a danger which Pear must grapple with, and so ensues a journey in which fantasy and reality intertwine.
Now, without being an expert in the mental health field, I feel certain that having to come to terms with the idea that what your mind is telling you is not what is necessary ‘correct’ is an experience that requires some questioning of one’s own sense of reality. There is also one glaring parallel between the novel and my own experience; the asylum in the novel, its corridor and chronological pulse, had to be inspired by something. I don’t think I need to say much more.
Thoughts Come Alive in a Novel
My own thoughts on the reality-fantasy divide are idealistic, as are many of my thoughts, and I suppose these must come alive somehow in the novel, particularly in the ending, which frightens and yet empowers me, when I reflect upon it. It feels like disobedience, a power that one with mental health difficulties may feel that they lack. And I hope, if only one person reads this book, that they will find strength in it to speak to others and share their mind in a way that helps others help them and, most importantly, helps them help themselves.
This is my true hope for the book. It is a gothic, literary fantasy, but it is also a story of people, and in so being I hope people find themselves it in, somewhere. In that sense, without being philosophical, I hope it provokes philosophical thoughts in any readers. Because in thinking deeply about the world, we think about our place in it, and in so doing we can only then hope to find comfort in who we want to be and how we can be it. Our views, concrete or abstract, are what we can control (or not at all) in how we move about the earth, and Godless Cosmologies is me trying to say how we deal with the difficult moments, without truly saying that at all.
(c) Christy Theodoulou
My website: https://christytheodoulou.com
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About Godless Cosmologies by Christy Theodoulou:
When young Pear arrives at Kopolka’s mental asylum on the day of his mother’s death, he is summoned to a cavernous midnight rendezvous where he meets Mystery, an enigmatic patient with a penchant for philosophy. He is soon tricked into her service which, at first, requires little more than helping her torment a school tyrant and retrieving a shipwreck for a seaboard shelter.
All seems well, particularly during his sojourns to the mollifying Water, a fantasy, underwater world in which he finds himself a whale in the company of erudite octopus Mr Octaveley. Soon, though, he discovers that Mystery harbours dangerous delusions of her own and, as the price of replacing his mother becomes ever more challenging for his shy, quiet nature, the lines between reality and fancy begin to shake. The question is, will Pear let them crumble or can he fight back?
Godless Cosmologies is out now. Order your copy online here and here.
Read more from Christy on Writing.ie here.
