Until the pale daybreak: essays from the periphery

• Other Authors: Lynes, Jeanette
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: essay; memoir
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10388/ETD-2015-10-2238

Until the Pale Daybreak: Essays from the Periphery is a collection of personal essays, in the form of a commonplace book, primarily exploring my experiences and memories of grief. These emotions are accompanied by travel through cities in Europe, North America and Brazil, and while these are essays of loss - either a physical loss, such as that of a parent, or an emotional bereavement, for a place or time - the essays also touch on literature, film, religion, human nature, and melancholia. Throughout the collection I write from the periphery of my life, choosing how much to reveal textually, inviting the reader to gaze alongside me, and at me, but always from a distance. The pieces range from childhood experience through to adult reflections, and an acceptance of the cards life has dealt. Along the way I reflect on varied subjects and characters, from assisted suicide, to the French musical star Dalida, and from Quentin Crisp, to mountaineer Jonathan Conville. The intention of these parallel lives is to complement my own narrative and take a reader back to the fringes of my conversation. The writing in this collection is varied. Certainly some sections are very sad, an emotion that seems unavoidable when writing about bereavement, but there is also humour, poetry, and calmness. The pieces are conversations, often to myself, that I am allowing the reader to eavesdrop on, perhaps witnessing something of their own lives in the writing, and provoking moments of reflection.