Inspired by Kate Atkinson, and Graham Greene, Greenwood evokes the atmosphere of ‘swinging’ London, and Brighton in the mid-’60s and ’70s, and, by contrast, the darker mood, back up north, in West Yorkshire, at the time of the Ripper murders, and the beginnings of the Thatcher terror.
Two loves in his youth almost tear Zac apart; Glenda, from Halifax, his ‘Nemesis’, and his wife, Miriam. She is a ‘True Roman’, and a ‘Crystal Spirit’. But he loses her.
A twenty and twenty-first-century Julien Sorel, Zac feels alienated from his generation and is obsessed about the World War Two RAF. He strives to forgive his courageous, but sadistic, father.
Two great male friends; Stan, and Ian, are graphically brought to uproarious, and exhilarating life. Zac struggles with but overcomes his alcohol addiction. He also struggles to find his own voice as an artist but finally succeeds.
He seeks, and finds a goddess; actually many of them!
As ‘Nina’, he walks, for a time, on the ‘wild side’, and falls in love with, but loses, his Dominatrix, Madame Assumpta.
Zac finds himself, at last, single, poor, and sane, but somehow, ‘connected’.
He becomes a successful artist, and, unaccountably, a happy man!