Skimpily dressed, spinning on a wheel and about to have knives thrown at her; Charlotte has a few remaining seconds to reconsider her actions. Trepidation is overwhelmingly replaced by a surge of pure joy.
Charlotte is a practicing dentist, married to a teacher. Her husband, family and friends value her as sensible, reliable and dependable but joke about her need to create “To do“ lists for everything. She dresses conservatively and has hardly changed her look over the years.
There is no light bulb moment to mark her extraordinary transition from the white coat, sterilised workplace, to her current setting of sequinned leotard and circus big top. It happens gradually, step by step. More remarkably, she finds a way to dovetail her double life.
Her husband, reluctantly, enters into this new world. In some ways, his is a bigger metamorphosis. He abandons his cautious, by the book curriculum teaching, to combine the roles of ringmaster and of travelling circus, schools educator. His life transforms from one of daily dread of his pupils, to one that fulfils his desire to do something meaningful, with a resonating impact upon those he teaches.
As they invent and improvise a new paradigm for themselves, they face ridicule, admiration, envy, horror and doubt. To keep their new double-lives in balance, they must juggle life on the road, life with a mortgage and the incomprehension of each community with which they wish to mingle.
The knives are literally out. Each community want the couple to conform to and whole-heartedly adopt their own very different values. All are convinced that eventually, an either or choice will have to be made. Many have compelling personal needs for their own lifestyle choices to be validated by this couple.
If anyone has ever fantasised about running away to join the circus, or of combining a sensible life with a long held desire to break the mould, this is a novel that shows how it could be done.
This has a great 'hook', in that many readers will be similar to the naysayers and skeptics that plague your heroes - and will be wanting them to fail. The question is, are you going to make them fail?
ReplyDeleteAt the End of the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin the frustrated hero leaves his clothes on the beach. David Nobbs then had the problem of what to do in the sequel...I think to pull this off you need a really good and surprising ending.
It sounds like you've found a clever and fun way to explore your 'sliding doors' theme of 'what if...' which could work very well as a vehicle to contrast the mundane with the extra-ordinary.
ReplyDeleteThis has the potential for a very entertaining novel. I would be fascinated to know about the little developments that lead to such a final, dramatic change in Charlotte's life and that of her husband and how that affects their relationship.
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