cover image What I Have Written

What I Have Written

John Scott. W. W. Norton & Company, $15 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-393-03683-1

Scott is a hitherto unknown (to us) Australian writer who has created in this ``novel of erotic obsession,'' as the publisher calls it, an intensely hermetic world. Its story is told in three voices, of Christopher Houghton, a Melbourne-based writer who at a dinner party in Paris meets Frances Bourin, a woman who comes to haunt him by long distance; his wife; and the writer's friend and editor, who loves the wife, hopelessly. Their voices are further merged into a novella the author is writing, his correspondence with the Parisienne and fragments of journals. The effect is that of a hall of mirrors, where only the epistolary passion of Christopher and Frances Bourin seems alive. She is a woman who lives for sex, and he is at once fascinated by and afraid of her voraciousness. Christopher's sudden death, while he is still irresolute about pursuing an affair, leaves his wife and friend confused and resentful. Scott, a master of moods, at times catches a real sense of erotic abandonment and despair. His sketched cityscapes of Melbourne and Paris are vivid and evocative. But despite the brooding sophistication of his style, his tale is really too slight to bear its weight of angst and thwarted passion. (Sept.)