Fiction
Reviews
- “A well-told tale, set in the exciting summer of 1974 in Athens, when the colonels fell from power, Greece was mobilizing for war with Turkey, and Andreas Papandreou returned from exile in Toronto to seize the mantle of Greek leadership. ...a moving exploration of a Canadian father’s difficult relationship with his son.” Bronwyn Drainie, The Globe & Mail
- “As in the plays of Classical Greece, most of the blood and murder in this literate thriller take place ‘off-stage’…. MacSkimming shares with [Lawrence] Durrell the ability to transform a physical place into something akin to a character. Athens and Crete are given a life of their own. MacSkimming’s description of the decadent, decaying splendor of Athens and the timeless magic of an increasingly worldly Crete is acute, bittersweet, and memorable. …[He] has written with care and clarity of the timeless journey to self-knowledge.” Diana Brebner, Ottawa Citizen
- “Political thrillers of John Buchan’s Thirty-Nine Steps variety, in which an intrepid hero becomes entangled in the internal affairs of another country, are still rare enough in Canadian literature to raise an eyebrow. …A compelling and memorable novel.” Wayne Grady, Montreal Gazette
- “Rare and refreshing is the book that celebrates coming to terms with endings instead of romantic beginnings, and this is the aim of Out of Love. …The epigraph by Durrell indicates MacSkimming’s awareness of the illusory nature of romantic love and of our willful self-deception when we are caught in its throes. Reminiscent of John Fowles’ The Magus, as well as his Daniel Martin.” Jill Franks, Canadian Literature
Availability
Out of Love was published by Cormorant Books as a trade paperback in 1993 and is currently out of print. Previously owned copies are available through antiquarian booksellers, as well as Abebooks and other online sellers dealing in used books. A French edition translated by Jean Chapdelaine Gagnon was published by Les Herbes rouges in 1995.
A limited number of mint copies of the English edition, signed and inscribed by the author, are available by regular mail. To obtain a signed copy, send a letter with name and address and a requested inscription, if any, along with a cheque or money order for $30 CDN, inclusive of postage and handling, to Roy MacSkimming, R.R.3, Perth, ON K7H 3C5, Canada. Your copy will be shipped within a few days of receipt of the order.
Out of Love
About the Book
Out of Love is a novel of passion and redemption set in modern Greece on the verge of war. As the right-wing military dictatorship collapses in August 1974, Toronto publisher James Urquhart flies to Athens on a quest to free his twenty-year-old son, Nick, who has been imprisoned for unexplained reasons. Urquhart is unprepared for what he finds. His search for Nick takes him on a journey through his the ruins of his own past: a lost love, a shattered marriage, and the unresolved conflicts of his relationship with his son.
Confounded by obstacles, Urquhart reluctantly seeks help from his former lover, Maria, and an old colleague, Michaelis Kastri, the Greek socialist leader now returned from exile in Toronto. Neither turns out to be the person Urquhart thought he knew. He must contend on his own with Nick’s jailers, officials of the failed junta determined to hold onto their power, and must finally travel to a remote village on Crete to learn Nick’s and his own fate.
Out of Love is Roy MacSkimming’s second novel. Before publication, author Heather Robertson wrote:
“Jim Urquhart’s search for his son Nick through the streets of Athens leads us into the shadows of an ancient Greece the tourist never sees, the bloody Greece of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Out of Love is a subtle, haunting evocation of political fascism and parental guilt. I couldn’t put it down.”
Excerpt
I’d never imagined that one day I’d enter a fascist prison. The corridors reeked of ammonia. The walls, presumably once lime-green, were faded to an ugly brown from decades of cigarette smoke. I felt deeply angry to think they had Nick in there.
…The cell block was silent except for our echoing footsteps on the concrete floor. We passed a succession of barred cells, and although the lighting was almost non-existent, I could make out a prisoner in each one, half hidden in shadow, stirring uneasily as we passed. At first I didn’t look. It seemed wrong to stare at humans caged like zoo animals. Then it occurred to me that they needed recognition from a human face, one from outside this place. Perhaps they knew Nick, had spoken with him, had tried to help him –
The major stopped abruptly at the end of the row. I felt a bizarre ambivalence. Desperate to talk to Nick, to reassure him everything was going to be all right, I was also afraid to see him in such a wretched place. Then an even stranger thought: he was safer here, these bars provided protection from adversity and danger, from the chaotic world about to explode outside….
At a gesture from the major, I peered into the recessed shadows behind the bars.
I showed Nick my face, trying to smile reassuringly. I could barely discern his long body reclining on a cot against the back wall. Was he asleep? I wondered if he’d been told I was coming. The major barked at him to step forward.
Nick hesitated. Visibly gathering his strength, he rose slowly from the cot and shuffled forward like an old man.
I’d expected him to rush toward me. I was shocked by the painful slowness of his movements. I watched in mounting alarm as his tall angular form emerged into the brown light from the corridor. He was wearing jeans and a soiled white shirt rather than prison dress. With new understanding, a new objectivity from which emotion had suddenly vanished, I studied the unkempt black hair and aquiline nose, the handsome sculpted mouth above a chin covered with black bristles, of a total stranger.