Fixed Limits

'Fixed Limits' is an autobiographical novel of first-person tendency documenting several weeks in the life of a budding writer (Michael Savage, whom we first encounter in the novel 'Changing Worlds') as he confronts the challenges of working alone for the first time and grappling with the problem, in a constraining domestic environment, of 'limits', both private and public, that forms the leitmotiv of this book, which was John O'Loughlin's first concerted attempt, dating from 1976 and suggesting the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre and even Hermann Hesse, at the so-called 'philosophical novel' which, like Sartre, in this instance is decidedly journalistic.