Alan Gould launches novel and poetry

23 August 2009

Alan Gould to launch novel and poetry
I have two books that are on the brink of appearing on the market.
The novel is entitled The Lakewoman, is published by Australian Scholarly Press, and is my seventh work of fiction.
It tells the story of an Australian fellow, Alec, from a pastoral  family of these parts (I envisaged a sheep run in the vicinity of Lanyon) who is at Cambridge University prior to World war Two, gets
taken into the British forces and is part of the Airborne assault at DDay. However, instead of finding war, he encounters Viva, the lakewoman, and from this unfolds a love story that takes him from the
life of conventional promise that he had - footballer, athlete, scholar - to a lifelong relationship altogether stranger.
Essentially he has encountered the Dame du Lac of Arthurian story and is placed within an enchantment which, I trust, has a great deal of psychological intrigue and truth to tell.  The book is about the psychological conditions of enchantment. When my agent read it, she
called it 'a stunner', and novelist Alex Miller refers to t as a 'brilliant achievement' in the back cover.
Does that sell it?
The poetry is called 'Folk Tunes', comes from Salt publishing in UK, and collects together poems I wrote after I was the Poet In Residence at the National Folk Festival in 2001.  To quote the blurb,
'Folk Tunes' seeks to present poems that combine the immediate lightness and clarity of sense found in much folksong, with the formal shapeliness and appeal of such music, while presenting fairly
the complexity and delicacy of emotion required by the subjects addressed.'

I have copies of the poetry now in my possession, and hope, after this weekend, to have copies of the novel. A good distribution in bookshops is something I hope for more than trust.  Were I selling to
anyone directly I would charge $20 for the poetry, and not more than $25 for the novel.
 The launch of The Lakewoman in Canberra will be at Dalton's on Wed Sept 9th at 6-15, and will be done by John Clanchy. You're all welcome,   As if he were not prima donna enough, Gould is launching a second book, poems this time, on October 8th, again at Dalton's, 6-15pm, and done by Paul Hetherington.
Alan Gould