SYNOPSIS

 Beside the Dark Pool

Beside the Dark Pool is the second volume of a two part memoir, taking up the story of my life from 1980, where 'At the end of Darwin Road' ends. The 1980s began in dramatic fashion with demonstrations against the Springbok ruby tour of New Zealand. My husband Ian and I were both caught up in these events, and Ian tells part of the story, in eye witness accounts, in the first two chapters. He also tells the story of his life in an Auckland slum dwelling known as Paddy's Puzzle during World War 11. This building is the setting for my novel of the same name 'Paddy's Puzzle'.

My life had entered a new phase, as I had become a well-known writer after the publication of 'A Breed of Women', a novel which reflected on the change in women's lives in the 1970s. Tens of thousands of these books were sold, and I became more deeply involved in the literary life of New Zealand and also met many international writers, including Nobel Prize winner Patrick White, the British writer Fay Weldon, and Angela Carter, with whom I had a close friendship in the last years of her life. I began to travel widely, and this book gives an account of early journeys to Europe, Nova Scotia, Canada, where I stayed for some time while researching my novel 'The Book of Secrets', and Asia. In Asia, Ian and I entered Vietnam and Cambodia at a time when these countries were struggling to recover from wars and genocide. In Cambodia, we met the late Sir Peter Ustinov, who played a later role in my life.

The book takes the writing of Marguerite Duras as a framework for the way I came to view the world beyond New Zealand. A Vietnamese-born Frenchwoman, she is a writer whose work I have long admired, and to whom I have been able relate some aspects of my own life. Duras's last home in France, which I have visited, has a large dark pool beside it, which I've used as a metaphor for 'the dark pool' of the imagination.

I discuss the process of writing several of my novels and short stories, and offer some suggestions about the process of writing in general.