J C Pascoe

Novel yes, book no. I published two technical books, one a best seller, when I was a consultant electronics engineer but that was way back in the 1980s. After retiring in 2007, I restarted my writing activities and have now published a further eight books, all available on Smashwords and elsewhere. My books fit a variety of genres: religion, autobiographical, blog-style essays, and quirks of the English language. So, “Conversations” is not my first book but it is my first novel.

“Conversations” is essentially a series of discussions between the two protagonists Abi and Gerry. Abi, a final year university student, is seeking opinions on a variety of topics relevant to her social science degree course whereas Gerry, the divorcé and beekeeper, is more than happy to oblige if only for the company. Inevitably, their relationship progresses through various stages until, finally, in an explosion of sexual activity, described explicitly, Abi and Gerry become romantically entangled. On its own, this concept may not be enough to hold a reader’s interest and so I have woven two extra threads into the story.

The first is to draw parallels between the topics under discussion and the lives of honey bees. Honey bees, like ants and naked mole rats, live in highly-ordered colonies and many problems experienced by humans, such as war and over-population, have been solved by the bees. Gerry illustrates his contributions to the discussions with relevant facts about honey bees.

The second thread is what I call a book within a book. Following every chapter is a shadow chapter that over the course of the book shows how Abi and Gerry learnt about love and sex from puberty to the present day. We learn how Gerry grew up as a teenager in the 1970s, his early voyeurism, his seduction by an older landlady, his marriage followed by divorce, and his post-divorce return to masturbation aided by freely-available pornography available on the Web. Abi, on the other hand, entered puberty nearly forty years later, in 2007, and her initiation into sex happens in a much freer environment. The highlight of her sexual odyssey occurs when at age eighteen she tours Europe for three months with a friend Sally by her side and a variety of condoms in their rucksacks. The two girls engage in a medley of sexual activity as they travel through Amsterdam, Paris, Valencia, Majorca, Rome, Milan, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Prague and memorably on a train travelling from Copenhagen to Stockholm.