Dreams Of Speaking

In this, her third novel, Gail Jones shows herself to be a writer more and more comfortable with her medium. Alice Black is a young academic with a grant to write about the aesthetics of modernity. For most of her life she has felt not quite connected. She arrives in Paris to write; ironically this is where her former lover, Stephen, is living. Still in love with her, Stephen tries to rekindle the relationship, but for Alice it is finished. She sees Paris with an outsider's eye; from her window she looks down onto a schoolyard and invents names and personalities to go with the people she observes. On a train returning from Chartres she strikes up a conversation with an elderly Japanese man who introduces himself as Mr Sakamato. An independent scholar, Mr Sakamoto is working on a biography on Alexander Graham Bell. Together they share a fascination for modernity. 'We must be friends, Alice Black,' Mr Sakamoto announces. Their friendship develops as they tell each other their stories and their ideas. Mr Sakamoto is a survivor of Nagasaki and his sharing of this trauma with Alice helps her to become more grounded. He tells and shows her things she didn't know. This is a beautifully realised novel about loneliness, friendship and ideas. Mark Rubbo is from Readings Carlton