Crazy

‘Crazy’ is an account of the origins and progress of an early, all-consuming relationship and the effect this relationship has had on the teller of the tale, Jane Feaver, who, in middle age, has become a teacher of creative writing. She shuttles between her present predicament, where she tussles with what it means to write fiction at all, and the story in hand, an ill-fated tale of obsession compelling in its rawness and emotional candour. Jane returns to scenes of childhood whose after-effects can be seen to permeate the emotional landscape of what unfolds – marriage, childbirth and the vagaries of working life. Questions of love, ambition and identity are examined in a novel that is, above all, about story-making itself, about who gets to tell the tale and how, and about the ways in which those stories we absorb and accrue become the ones that make us, and (if anything can) might redeem us, too.