From Daniel To Frances

by Neville Conway

www.nevilleconway.com

Narcissus Books   104pp
ISBN: 978-0-9543848-3-8


First published February 2009

R.R.P £7.99
On line price: £6.25
(plus post & packing)

The Book

The unusual affair of Daniel and Frances, conducted in brief, infrequent meetings over twenty years, is the subject of Adulteress Anonymous. The novel is narrated by Frances and these sonnets, as well as other verse (included in Gallimaufry) are the means by which Daniel explores his very varied emotions, for her, and for the reader. This book publishes the entire collection of eighty, for despite their singular provenance, they speak to all lovers. One about the sonnet form itself, number 46, sums up Daniel’s reasons for preferring it.

46

The sonnet is the symbol of our love.
Its discipline, its sentiment condensed,
its marshalling of words, like hand in glove,
its bid for beauty – all are precept-fenced.
But set within this rigid, rationed frame,
adventures in imagination bloom,
dispatched in flight, emotion fanned to flame,
enhanced, not blighted, by restricted room.
So are we blessed in our constrained affair;
our vision, focus, gratitude for time,
and fasts from flesh refined, as scent in air,
to love's quintessence in a paradigm.
Free verse is for freed love, may grow as rapt;
forbidden love finds sonnets better apt.

The Author

Neville Conway was formerly consultant cardiologist at the Wessex Regional Cardiac Centre, Southampton.

He published two medical books, and fifty scientific papers and leaders. For five years he was associate editor of the British Heart Journal, and was an invited English language editor to the proceedings of two world congresses.

He writes novels, non-fiction and poetry. A short story won First Prize some years ago at the Southampton Writers' Conference.