Initial inspiration and a title for the story came from the label on a folder in which was saved material, including a couple of chapter sketches, not used for The Zoo Keeper. However, only in a loose sense is Missed Chapters a sequel to the earlier book. The same central characters appear but their perspectives are entirely changed. And the theme of community development is shifted to the other side of the counter, so to speak, with the poverty industry serving as a backdrop. This latest novel explores at the personal level rather than the systemic. It is the story of one woman’s search for self-understanding.

The opening paragraph of the book is written in the first person. Within it can be discerned a hint of what is to come. For the joint introduction of the three main characters, the present tense is used; and it is again the preferred tense when a successful author comes for dinner. Throughout, a crisp dialogue accompanies the humour-laced narrative. There is the occasional stream (sensibly reduced to a trickle) of consciousness. The character Ellis mulls to himself but avoids the mind-lectures of The Zoo Keeper.

Perhaps the main exercise for the reader is presented by the progressively receding time frame of the trips into the protagonist’s past. The ‘what happened next’ tends to come before the event which led to it. Moreover, these excursions are slotted into an ongoing busy life. Yet when all the pieces are revealed, everything fits together nice and neatly, just like they should.

Gardeen is full of herself after having worked her way up from placement to head of a citywide community development agency in just five smart years. She spends freely and lives in a large house overlooking the village green, with Ellis and Fee. The older Ellis looks after the domestic side of things while providing an intellectual safety net; the significantly younger Fee (Fiona), passing in public as a daughter, is Su’s companion in the bedroom. At the office, a previous boss watches her back, while a personal assistant imitates her in mannerism and dress.

We quickly observe Su in action: a description of her home life in the opening pages is interrupted while she charms some suits into releasing more cash for the agency. Elsewhere, she deals with matters as they arise, juggling pragmatism with self-interest. Every alternate month, she departs the scene for a weekend of rigorously maintained privacy. Of course, the reader goes too.

The farmhouse of Su’s childhood is occupied (and undergoing complete restoration) by sniffy elder sister Margo who, with husband, take care of ‘physically indestructible, mentally crumbling’ Mum. This is territory in which Su has no authority and where she finds little joy. When, over the Sunday lunch table, Margo calculatingly announces, “Stan’s been in touch. Suzie, did you know he’s dying? He’s asked to see you,” Su is propelled into regaining the disowned gaps in her life.

Stan is one-time step-father to the sisters. He has served time in prison. Su goes to see him in a drab care home, the first meeting between the two for several years. She says sorry; he says sorry. But for what, we have to wait. Gradually, a picture emerges of a much damaged family. Su’s precise role in events remains ambiguous to the story’s end.

Meanwhile, in their respective textual chapters, we observe Suzie the suburban housewife; Suzie the teenage drop-out, Suzie the overshadowed child. Also, we are there by her side as the present-day Su deals with such inconveniences as an office rebellion, accusations of financial impropriety, and collapse of a relationship.

Missed Chapters begins and ends in childhood which, we are reminded, ‘is not a conscious experience, it is something recalled as an adult’. With Su Gardeen gone full circle, is this woman with balls (her words) able to find out what drives her? Can she declare herself the complete woman she would wish to be? Just what are the chances of her carrying Mum’s disease? Why do stories like this leave such anxious questions unanswered?

The author in the story, that is. Here we have Iain Brimswall the aspiring real life author introducing the character of Craig Mains the high-selling fictionalised author. (Mains is allowed two appearances in the story.) The books that Mains sells supposedly by the warehouseful contain some interesting if decidedly oddball ideas appertaining to such topics as the evolution of man, social exploitation, and the future of religion.

One reason for such a device might be that the actual writer has things to say which perhaps are better said through a pen held at double arm’s length - an added layer of protection, as it were. Another is that there simply is not the opportunity to develop the themes and make them into real books, but the core ideas are too catchy to be filed away. As far as Missed Chapters is concerned, in meeting Craig Mains the social wannaclimb Su realises she has reached her limit both intellectually and influentially, and knows when to back off. Also, Ellis is left quietly to fume about the lack of progress with his own book writing ambitions. Fee’s incipient religiosity is aired, too. The Mains character has therefore a structural purpose within the story and, in order to be credible, he is given some punchy stuff. We may not have heard the last of this guy.

When it’s not about all the other things it’s, well, about paedophilia. No invented author for this – the characters talk directly. While in prison, Stan gave much thought to the area of interest that got him there. He shares his ideas with Su; and Su checks them out with a child abuse specialist. Symbols of paedophilophobia break the surface before and after the discourse: a street disturbance outside the house of a convicted molester; a police raid on the home of a porn downloader; the banning of photographs at a children’s parade.

The theme of pre-pubertal sexual contact, beyond an often tacky subgentre out there, will ever be a tricky one. There is a certain distaste for discussing the subject, for writing about it, for reading about it. The avoidance no doubt springs from a perceived risk of contamination, of accusation by association.

A mitigation of the paedophile condition this book definitely is not; a criticism of the way we deal with the issue, it assuredly is. What is known about paedophilia in the general domain is often limited to media reports of court cases in which there are evil perpetrator and innocent child victim(s). But, as Brimswall’s novel sensitively conveys, things are not always so black-and-white. There may be more going on. The witch-hunt approach to paedophile activity (whether alleged or confirmed) is the mark of ignorance and herd dynamics - it is not the useful methodology of a civilised society.

Regardless of the stance, the theme is crucial to the basic plot. Also relevant is the inclusion of adult sex, seamy more than steamy. Gardeen is presented as a mosaic character, a synthesis produced from ‘a handful of non-fictional females’. Readers are free to admire or disdain the protagonist. Likely, a bit of both. “Everyone has some missed chapters in their life’s story,” says Su, to herself. “Maybe these chapters are best left that way.” In the case of the novel born of leftovers, don’t believe it.

December 2006