GREGORY DARK

Three women in love ... three despairs ... three victories

Three women: sexy, funny, vulnerable ...
three trips:
an Atlantic sea crossing, a flight from Barcelona, a drive to Bristol ...
three insignificant women, three insignificant trips ...
of enormous significance.

Three extraordinary ordinary women
who use these trips as catalysts to get their lives into focus,
to calm their tempests, to fight their demons ...
to emerge, bloodied, but victorious.

They’ll make you want to laugh with them and cry with them ...
they’ll also make you want to cry at them and laugh at them ...
to harangue them and strangle them ...
and then to bed them and to wed them.

Merry Wives is like the women of its title: sexy, funny, out-spoken, controversial, poignant without being maudlin and optimistic without being sentimental, of immense dignity and charm ... and very good company.

In Titus & Roni Dark showed his mastery of the train-of-thought novel, a mastery again evident in Merry Wives. Again like the women it depicts, it is a book which would be a great escort on a journey ... or in bed!

Here’s a joke for you: A man hobbles into the doctor’s with a broken leg. “I know just how to treat that,” says the doctor. With which he takes out a hammer and breaks the man’s other leg.

Not funny? Unfunny, even? Even a bit crazy?

Well, it’s also an unfunny joke, something crazy, the way that it is precisely thus that so many of us treat our emotional pain. We therefore hurt so very much more than we need to.

Ow! I’m Hurting will stop that happening to you.
Pain is so painful it causes more pain; and that causes yet more.

We are constantly creating circles for ourselves of the most vicious pain.

Written in the form of a letter to a friend, Dark’s book is written with an easy, relaxed style which matches the gentleness of its content. Ow! I’m Hurting is not only a must read, it is a must re-read and re-read again.

For those already using it, it is considered as indispensable for their emotional pain as the box of sticking plaster is for their domestic accidents.

Ow! I’m Hurting is the book that counsellors read when they’re in pain!

If you still want to laugh when all around tell monstrous lies
And face not one consequence; if you still love this world,
Mankind and life, still think they all can realise
Their huge potential – the iffy oyster that is pearled;
If you think politicians deserve all the stick they get,
And thug-like multinationals deserve to be unmasked;
If the rise of poverty and slavery can get you quite upset,
Or are worried that our journalists leave way too much unasked;
If you feel you’re on your lonesome fretting ’bout the Earth;
If you’re worried ’bout your privacy ’midst Microsofted codes;
If you think of ethics, morals there’s presently a dearth:
Then here’s a book to bring you heart:
Go read Dark’s ‘Loads of Odes’!