Tuesday 4 January 2011

Time Loop

In Time Loop Morelle's poetic style is given new vistas and countries, different times and myriad characters in this new novel. Written by a well-establishedEuropean writer, it is a complicated but avid read and I finished it in a couple of sittings.

In this day and age a novel about the Cathars would be replete with car chases, murderous minds in search of the Holy grail, a hero racing about in stolen cars, forgettting toilet breaks, a nice cup of tea, who falls platonically iin love and wonders when he's going to get something to eat, before or after he'd found Christ's Cup and climatically vanquishing the multifarious villans.

Time Loop breaks the mould. This is a personal story, or stories, a human tale, firmly jigsawed in reality. Set in the late nineties in rainy edinburgh and by contrast the heat and long enchanted Southern france. A man and woman meet on the well worn tourist trail of the extermination of the of the Cathars. One is married, while the other is a footloose musician with writer's block.

Instinct or intuition bring then together. The woman's husband, though not murderous and a very careful driver, is obsessed with discovering the truth of the powers of Christ's blood-red filled goblet, and gives our hero a good kicking that he did nothing to warrant.

Yet through dreams and esoteric synchronistic experiences the doors are open to early13th Century France.

Here, the Cathars faith in their beliefs are tested by the horrors, tortures and burnings at the stake. Both in Edinburgh and in France the two main characters and their reincarnation links of the past and future come to an understanding that love is the key.

The avid barbarism of the Roman Catholic Church and the over ambitious greed of the French King are far more disturbing than any recent action-packed shoot em up.

I wholly recommenend Morelle Smith's Time Loop andher other woek: Streets of Tirana, Almost Spring and her many poetry collections such as Deepwater Terminal and The Way Words Travel.

Time Loop is published by Playback Publications in Sandwick, Shetland, UK or at www.playbackarts.co.uk