I adore Catherine de Saint Phalle’s writing: astonishing, wise, engaging, insightful, warm, compassionate, intimate and always ringing with the heavy weight of a truthful bell.
Call Me Marlowe (Transit Lounge 2023) is an endearing, traumatic and hopeful novel set between Prague and Melbourne, as protagonist Harold Vanek searches for the meaning of his life through his relationships and his foray into his personal and political past and history, back to where his story began in his Motherland before he was even born.
The only person to call Harold ‘Marlowe’ is the woman he loves (deeply, secretly; a passion doused by circumstances, a friendship borne of desperation and optimism). She is Marylou, a sex worker he has brought to Melbourne for a better life. But when dark secrets emerge about Harold’s knowledge of Marylou’s previous life, and his participation in aspects of it that were without her knowledge, he is compelled to flee to Prague, the ‘City of a Hundred Spires’, eager to find answers, restitution for his mistakes, and forgiveness for his actions.
In Prague he meets Vaclav, Maire, Pete and Petr, all intensely moving and authentic characters, who change his world. The depiction of the touching and intimate relationship with the young boy Petr, who comes into his life through dramatic and tragic circumstances, is a highlight of this novel.
Catherine de Saint Phalle is a writer of extraordinary beauty. Her prose is evocative, gentle and realistic, delivered with a delicate grace, subtle skill and an almost viscose intensity that has the characters surging from the pages. Every sentence is considered. Every relationship is examined with curiosity and intelligence. She is one of our finest literary writers.