Black Boxes
Ana Lewis is a woman trapped in a black box of her own creation; the
black box of her mind. Afraid to blink for fear of puncturing holes in
her memory she remains in her room, woefully neglecting her two children
Pip and Davie, leaving them to fend for themselves and find any kind of
love, anywhere they can. Davie retreats into his own world, permanently
soiled and communicating only by sign language, while Pip, fat and
desperate, sneaks out of the house at night to have sex with a boy who
hates her.
Pip and Davie exist in parallel, with only Ana's bedroom door separating her from them. She does not want to see them. They are the present and Ana chooses to live in a past, continually raking over the ashes of a relationship that was never really hers.
Accomplished and affecting, Caroline Smailes weaves together a catastrophic tale of mismatched lives. Lives lived in black boxes.
ISBN 978-1-906321-70-3
£7.99 July 2008