Secret Life

What do Harry, Amber, and  Blanche  have in common? Very little it would seem. Harry works for MI6. The shadowy world of espionage is filled with danger. Harry must walk a fine line, an existential tightrope between this world and the world where secrets are carefully guarded. It’s a life that often comes at a hefty price: at the end of the day a sense that you’re living an existence that is not your own. To the world he is merely Harry: stolid, predictable, outwardly dull. In private, however, he leads an intense inner life. Tortured by a creeping sense of his own mortality, he longs to recapture something of the fire he had as a young man, when the game was fresh and alive and the most important, final chapters of one’s story had yet to be written. From here we move to the main narrative as told by a British national, Amber, who falls in love with an American named Walter, then relocates to the American South, to be by his side. Walter eventually enlists in the Air Force. From the time she settles in the South leading up to the time that Walter is stationed overseas, as a combat pilot in Southeast Asia, she pursues her writing passion. Her goal? To follow in the footsteps of her literary idol, Iris Murdoch. That is, until her body betrays her. Cut now to Blanche. During the day she works at Target. By night, she’s a writer of romantic fiction. Like her grandmother, she longs to be a famous author. But in the age of celebrity culture and reality television, where sound bites and images have largely replaced words and ideas, literary fame won’t come easy: in fact, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning. And so what becomes important to her is not fame so much as the life-giving, real act of creating art, if only one day to meet that special someone with whom she can share her artistic vision, but more important, be herself.