Links to multiple reviews of "Seven Types of Ambiguity."

Quoted: Links to multiple reviews of Seven Types of Ambiguity by Elliot Perlman

This is the reference page an Australian Bookstore made for Elliot Perlman. It includes links to all of his current works as well as a bit more information about him. This was a great quote about wht he was trying to do with "Seven Types of Ambiguity," the novel I just read:

Quoted: "…I don't shrink from the fact that this is an attempt, anyway, to be a serious examination of contemporary Australian society, and I'm not saying that Australia needs me to do it. I think Australia needs 'people' to do it, generally. And I'll stick my neck out and say I don't think it's done often enough. And that's not to criticise any particular writers or any particular book, because there's some outstanding writers of Australian literary fiction, so there's no sub-text in here. I'm not pointing the finger at anybody. I'm just saying that if we, as a society, aggregated, don't produce anybody that's writing about all the terrible things that have been happening to our society in the last ten or twenty years; you've got to ask questions about the maturity of our culture."

I just finished a quite wonderful book by Elliot Perlman this week and I'm trying to learn some more about him. This webpage at the BBC is a bit outdated (in that it states he is working on the novel I just finished reading) but I really love this quote he gives to aspiring novelists:

Quoted: "There is a tendency in the middle of the writing of a novel for the writer to feel adrift, lost floating aimlessly in a rough uncharted ocean of words. You are too far from the beginning to feel the enthusiasm that set you on your way all those words ago and too far from the end to see the land of your completed tale where you may rest finally.

Quoted: There are so many obstacles between you and your completed manuscript. Do not let this sense of aimlessness stop you from finishing. From my own limited experience, and of the many writers to whom I have spoken, I am convinced that this feeling is normal. While feeling it is no guarantee that your novel will be artistically, critically or commercially successful, neither is it a sure sign of failure.

Quoted: When this feeling is engulfing you, remember the novels that have had the biggest effect on you as a reader. Look at those novels. Take them from your shelves. Flick through their pages. Remember the characters, settings, plots. Remember how they have made you feel. Perhaps the manuscript on which you drift aimlessly now will come to be such a book for people you have never met. Dwell on this, that this could happen. Take a deep breath and go back to your page. Perhaps there is someone who needs you to tell this story."