By NICOLE VALICEK
DAVID Ward has marked his debut in the literary world with a story about everything and nothing.
Reality is A Moving Target is the new novel by the first time Newport author.
David admits the story can be ambiguous at times, but asserts that it won’t stop readers from being sucked in to the narrative and characters.
“It’s genuinely open to interpretation,” he said.
In an age given to celebrating conversation, Reality Is A Moving Target is a dialogue between the inner life of an unreliable narrator and the unbelievable narratives of the world.
David said it’s about realities that run into each other, interim arrangements that become permanent and certainties that disintegrate without regard to cause and effect.
He said one plot line plays on the idea that Australia is a nation in thrall to grand narratives and visionary designs, intent on advancing its claims as a regional leader.
“One part deals with this thing called a plan for the region, an idea germinating think tanks, and the position of Australia to get a foothold in the Asia-Pacific before everything changes altogether.”
The book’s narrator Ray Nero, is a spare man in the justice bureaucracy and a bit of a mystery, even to himself.
“We probably live in a time that 98 per cent of life that doesn’t conform to a story tends to be ignored. (The narrative) plays to that idea a little bit.”
The literary fiction casts a sharp commentary on the political conspiracies of today.
“I wouldn’t be disappointed if they (readers) were a little bit puzzled as long as they got to the end.”
“I would like people to get absorbed in it.”
David studied fiction writing under Gerald Murnane in the 1980s and worked as a correspondent for the UK music press until the early 1990s.
He has spent the last few decades, recovering from ill-health, but said he envisaged writing a second and third volume in the series under the title The Provisional State.
Reality is a Moving Target is published worldwide in ebook format by Really Blue Books. It is also available from Amazon Kindle and Kobo.
