Framed as an online text that Arella posts incrementally throughout the month of December 1999, the narrative explores personal and cultural memory.
The novel begins as Arella prepares for 2000 and the fresh start it represents. More at home in cyberspace than anywhere she has actually lived, she reinvents herself and her life story for readers of a multimedia Web diary she calls Arella's Repertoire, a blend of memoir, travelogue, and blog. Characters who star in this virtual drama recapture worlds Arella has known and weave together the memories, dreams, and imaginings that have contributed to her development as a woman and a writer in postmodern America. Framed as an online text that she posts incrementally throughout the month of December 1999, the narrative explores personal and cultural memory.
Excerpt
With you, my readers, I share these fleeting impressions as I transform them into an end-of-the-century finale for *Arella’s Repertoire,* my space for writing on the World Wide Web. This is where I remember both the century and the phase of my life that are drawing to a close. It’s also where I envision a fresh start. A blend of fact and fiction, my stories trace the paths I’ve followed to reach my latest stopover, where I sojourn now, a time traveler en route.
Determined to confront the hazy memories of his troubled youth, Oliver Matthews, a retired detective and confirmed bachelor, returns to the picturesque town of Henley-on-Thames for the first time in years.
A teenage boy struggling with the coming-of-age issues of sexuality, religion, and peer approval is overwhelmed, but soldiers on. After several years, he comes to understand the family forces that have left him so deeply troubled, and the process of
