Description

The Novel

By Michael Kell Campbell

ISBN: 978-1-78382-5417
Published: 2020
Pages: 295
Key Themes: Mental Health, Aspergers, Paranoia, Music, Humour, Mid-life crisis, Depression, Philosophy, Chronic fatigue syndrome, Residential care work, Anxiety

Description

Peter Kane,A complicated man with a simplistic outlook, leads what one might describe as an ordinary suburban existence. He gets up, he walks the dog, he goes to work, he comes back home. He eats, he sleeps, he dreams, and he walks the dog again. And in between all this, he tries to fill his life with things that might possibly amuse him.

One day, at a car boot sale, he purchases a second hand computer. In a document on the computer, he finds a diary. What he reads intrigues and disturbs him.
He sets out to try to trace the writer, hoping somehow to help a lost, wayward soul mate. This takes him off on a journey of self discovery and self questioning.
But he is about to find out,that no good deed goes unpunished.

Overview

The story is set against a back drop of suburban Essex. Where, the protagonist lives a dualistic life, revolving around his home environment with his dog, and his job as a care Manager. We witness the turmoil of him battling with modernity, and his sense of self belief, whilst trying to cling onto what he thinks he knows as truth.But in a world of ever changing linguistic labels tags and perspectives, just what is truth?

Humour can be used as a great coping mechanism, but also as a great weapon to control.

About the Author

Michael Kell Campbell was Born 1960 in Hainault Essex.

Michael is an outsider artist, AKA cadwollow fink.
He worked as a sculptor for some years, and lived in parts of rural Essex and also North London and Cambridge. It was in Cambridge that he taught art and crafts to Adults with learning disabilities.

Feeling an empathy with his students, he decided to enter the Care Profession on a full time basis as a support worker. He eventually ended up Managing three different Care Homes supporting adults with LD, and a range of conditions such as Autism, Aspergers, Downs syndrome, Epilepsy, Dementia and schizophrenia.

Whilst back packing around America in the mid eighties he was inadvertently involved in an incident with four under cover cops, and a deranged man brandishing a hand gun. Luckily for him he came out of it physically unscathed, but unfortunately took the full blast to the head emotionally.

Some time afterward, back in the UK, he was diagnosed with depression and general anxiety disorder, along with post traumatic stress. This subsequently led to a nervous breakdown.

He has since tried to find the answers of being at odds with the world, through philosophy, art, meditation and music, with little success.

Then one day after years of soul searching, he had an epiphany, and has since spent the last few decades trying to remember what it was.