About this ebook
Felix, though amused and flattered by a visit to his wife's psychiatrist at her insistence, is himself drawn to misfits. Lisa (a hospital nurse), who eased his hospital pains, but later almost drags him into her own mired marital affairs. Alison (an English Department colleague he tries to help), enduring a brutal husband's sadism. A second Alison (a young student needing his comfort), having a dangerous affair with a married fellow professor. Louis Fein (a popular visiting scholar), whose mock theory is that every human relationship is a flirtation. Eleanor (working at CBC Television), a 29 year old virgin who perhaps handles Felix's sex counseling wisely.
In the end, his tennis playing partner and divorce lawyer friend Max, together with his needful wife Jessica, bring Felix to wonder whether real life should be more than just escapism into modern versions of jocosa materia, the old comic tales which are the subject of his serious academic research.
More fiction by F.W. Watt
Heads or Tails 23 Stories
After the Funeral
Loving Daughters
The Road to Sutton
The Youth Drug
The Lannigan Set-Up
Where is Julius
About the author
F.W. Watt studied at the University of British Columbia, Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar), and at the U. of Toronto, where he stayed as a professor in the English Department for 33 years. In the later stages of his career he dived into town and country life north of Toronto and became a commuter. Here were people in many ways different from those he knew in the ivory tower. He could see into their complicated and varied lives from close up as never before. And he was challenged to look more deeply into the ocean of his own intimate experiences, and those of many others he encountered daily. He felt driven to try to see below the surfaces. It became a compulsion to explore his visions in words and stories. He was not writing for others, but to satisfy his own need to be able to go back and relive moments of life which made him laugh and cry, and to try to understand them. Some of his visions he captured and published in poetry, others in short stories. The remaining mass of fiction, stories and novels, sat waiting during the quarter century of his retirement. Now, at 87 years, beyond the hopes and fears of young writers, but still wanting the fruits of sharing, he takes the ultimate test, the encounter with the minds and hearts of other readers. Go, little book. Eight of 8.
