Some 40 years later – as an editor – it’s now my job to figure out what makes a book tick (or more often, what it needs to make it tick). As an author, I dream of my own novels standing the test of time. As a reader, I love to luxuriate in fictional worlds. So, when a colleague and fellow author suggested tackling a bunch of classics to deconstruct them down to their skeletons, I was intrigued.
I had no idea what I was in for.
What these conflicting usages tell us is that the daimons of the ancient world were ambiguous beings, spirits with varying degrees of power that they could employ, or be made to employ, for good or evil ends. This is how they were portrayed in the Christian Bible where, in the Book of Matthew, Jesus admonished his disciples to ‘heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons.’ These daimons (translated as ‘demons’ in the English Bible) were unambiguously noxious, so that, when Jesus exorcised them, their victims were released from their sufferings. Such was the case of Mary Magdalene herself, ‘from whom he had cast out seven demons’. Yet, these same daimons were also cast as spirits capable of recognising and conversing with Jesus: ‘And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.’
I grew up near Changi, and therefore, in it. Ever since I was a child, before I even left the country for the first time, the airport represented free air-conditioning, clean toilets, and Wi-Fi—all publicly accessible 24 hours a day. Thanks to our public transit system, it’s efficiently connected to the rest of Singapore—an easy enough commute given the country’s small size. Here, heading to the airport feels no different from going to the mall. Growing up, I would sit cross-legged on the floor of Changi’s viewing gallery, where travelers could watch planes take off and land, and where I sought refuge from the equatorial heat while reading a book. I constantly campaigned for my parents to host my birthday dinners there. Sometimes, I would even slip into sweaters and pretend I was jet setting to a cold-weather country for a vacation instead of just the intensely climate-controlled airport fifteen minutes away from my house.
Everett’s novel proposes that each of us is a survivor of the hate crimes of the world: The very existence of such violence leaves us all wounded. The ending of the novel, which brings retribution for the initial murder and the ensuing acts of violence, reminds us that we cannot escape the effects of hatred by descending underground. Like the prisoners Plato imagines chained in a cave, Everett’s characters hope to dispel shadow play through the novelist’s weapons of the weak: dialogue and self-questioning
There is plenty of romance to Love Unedited, and much of it is the romance of independence: work, travel and having the courage of your convictions.