by: MG da Mota
Genre: Historical Psychological Drama/Mystery/Thriller
Release Date: December 6, 2024
Publisher: FlowingProse/M G da Mota
A woman living alone in a coastal Sussex town in 1998 plants a copper beech sapling at 3 a.m. on a dark, cold night. Why?
A ballet dancer in 1960s East Germany is oppressed, longs for escaping with his little daughter but not his wife. Why? Will he make it?
In 2022 Karsten von Stein, widower and principal of the Royal Ballet, with two young children, meets Ivone Benjamim, a Portuguese, newly-arrived principal dancer. They discover a magical chemistry when dancing and soon it transfers to their private lives.
Against the background of ballet and its dancers, a woman called Grace tells her story from a rehab centre. Obsessive, delusional she begins believing Ivone robbed her of the man of her dreams—Karsten. And then a skeleton is found in a garden...What connects all these people and their stories?
You’ll be the audience facing the stage of this balletic novel.
Loss and bereavement
This is something that we all have experienced at some stage in life or, if not yet, we will one day. So, I wanted to write about it briefly. I lost my mother to a horrible illness (Motor Neuron Disease) in 2008. Then from 2016 to 2022, I lost three of my greatest friends to various illnesses—one of whom is a dedicatee in my novel ARABESQUE; the other two in my novel STARS MAINTAIN THEIR GLOW—and in 2023 I lost my father who was an extraordinary man and to whom I owe everything.
Each person reacts to bereavement and loss in different ways. When grief strikes me and it is so powerful and devastating it takes my breath away, I tend to write a poem. It is a way of venting my pain. So, I decided to share here a poem that appears in ARABESQUE. I wrote it when my father died, using ballet as a metaphor. I decided to include it in the novel during the funeral of one of the characters’ father. It was, I thought, appropriate in more ways than one. Here is the poem:
The Ballet Dancer
He lived his life by the hour
like a wild sketch on the sand,
saw a world in a petal of a flower
and held it for me in his hand.
In the wind voices are singing
like a message from very far.
I miss the orchestra’s ringing
and the dancing of my star.
Before my eyes, so smart,
he cuts a slight arabesque.
Luminous, he stands apart
beautiful and statuesque.
A tear rolls in my sorrow
he’s gone to the stars, to dust.
For him there is no tomorrow
but to dance in his honour we must.
Prologue
Southeast England, late November 1998
She looks out of the window. Dark night. Black but clear. Twinkling dots punctuate the raven velvet of the sky. Stars shimmer cold and icy. Their light slightly wavering. She knows it is the Earth’s atmosphere. But that’s neither here nor there. It doesn’t matter a jot. Not at this moment anyway.
Darkness is the important thing. No moon. New moon. Why do people refer to a new moon when there is no moon or when one cannot see the moon from our revolving, ever turning blue dot? The moon is still up there in the sky. It’s just that at some point during its orbit its farther side from us is facing the sun. So the side facing us is dark and we can’t see it. As simple as that.
Tonight is new moon. An ideal night. She opens the window quietly and glances at the houses to her right first, then to her left. Like hers they are all immersed in silent darkness. People sleep. She looks at the luminous hands of her alarm clock on the side table. The shorter hand points at the number three, or close to it, and the long hand at somewhere between ten and fifteen. Probably around 3:12 in the morning. Her house stands almost but not quite alone on top of the hill. To her right, looking from her bedroom window that faces the back garden, there are two houses. The one closest to hers is empty.
Southeast England, late November 1998
She looks out of the window. Dark night. Black but clear. Twinkling dots punctuate the raven velvet of the sky. Stars shimmer cold and icy. Their light slightly wavering. She knows it is the Earth’s atmosphere. But that’s neither here nor there. It doesn’t matter a jot. Not at this moment anyway.
Darkness is the important thing. No moon. New moon. Why do people refer to a new moon when there is no moon or when one cannot see the moon from our revolving, ever turning blue dot? The moon is still up there in the sky. It’s just that at some point during its orbit its farther side from us is facing the sun. So the side facing us is dark and we can’t see it. As simple as that.
Tonight is new moon. An ideal night. She opens the window quietly and glances at the houses to her right first, then to her left. Like hers they are all immersed in silent darkness. People sleep. She looks at the luminous hands of her alarm clock on the side table. The shorter hand points at the number three, or close to it, and the long hand at somewhere between ten and fifteen. Probably around 3:12 in the morning. Her house stands almost but not quite alone on top of the hill. To her right, looking from her bedroom window that faces the back garden, there are two houses. The one closest to hers is empty.
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Thank you so much for featuring ARABESQUE today.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome.
DeleteHello "Read Your Writes", I'm the author of Arabesque and wanted to thank you for featuring my book. So thank you so much.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome. Thank you so much for stopping by.
DeleteSounds like a good read. I like the cover art.
ReplyDeleteIf you decide to read it, I hope you will enjoy it. I had great fun writing it. The cover art was created by two different people: the photos and images are from one person and the design and composition from another. Glad you liked it.
DeleteSounds like a wonderful book.
ReplyDeleteThat's nice to hear, as I wrote it. Thanks for having a look
DeleteThis sounds interesting
ReplyDeleteThank you. I hope that it is interesting and perhaps a little unusual.
DeleteThe book sounds very intriguing. I love the dance aspect. I've found ballet to be very emotive, and it usually brings me to tears. Love the title, too.
ReplyDeleteI love ballet and find it very emotive too. With this book I tried to pay my personal tribute to ballet. The title "Arabesque" is the name of my favourite ballet step, which the figure of the dancer on the cover is executing to perfection. Thank you for your interest.
Deletelooks like a fun one.
ReplyDeleteThis should be a very interesting novel. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like an interesting read.
ReplyDelete