Veronica's Papers

Gerald Clayton suffering from Amnesia, receives a package of papers from Veronica, a former clinical hypnotist.She tells him they accomplish his fantasy of gathering together, on the ship Marguerite, his past loves with the two of them present, but in disguise.In hopes of discovering his own past Gerald invites the passengers to share in a mystery by guessing what, or who, they all have in common.Veronica’s Papers by A. Colin Wright has an amazing premise that makes the reader think about the likelihood and outcome of such an experiment in his or her own life.Well-developed characters like Gerald Clayton, who finds himself in a nursing-home after losing his memory; his wife Elizabeth; and Veronica Castell (who has assembled papers documenting Gerald’s life along with other people from Gerald’s past) help the reader understand Gerald’s and Veronica’s thought processes.The unlikely setting is a cruise ship named Marguerite. This ship is of British registry, sailing out of Southampton to a variety of destinations like the Azores and the Canary Islands. Passengers receive an invitation (Compliments of ‘Creative Travel’) awarding them a fully paid seven-day cruise for two that includes a special program geared to meet their individual needs and interests.The intensity of the author’s style of writing is evident when he writes: “Humans are like individual atoms jostling in time and space in a constantly changing relationship, and every so often what we call chance brings together those who’ve met before so that we wonder whether there isn’t some further purpose. But what of the coincidences that fail to become evident? The odds against Janet’s being on the other side of that train were almost as great, but we’d never have known we were even close. How often have we been in such situations without knowing it? Only our ignorance prevents us from calling those coincidences and from seeing the basic oneness of life.”A. Colin Wright causes the reader to think and question mortality with its limitations in relationship to moral and spiritual concerns. This passage is an example: “The tragedy is that Christianity could be so much more. Christ’s words, it seems to me, rarely limit people to a narrow morality. Rather it’s Saint Paul and those who followed, more concerned with establishing orthodoxy under the leadership of a politically powerful church-who brought a small-minded understanding to a vision that encompasses all people’s strivings. Christians simply couldn’t tolerate rivals: a pettiness repeated often enough since. Yet there’s no contradiction between the worship of pagan gods, say, and that of Christ, for the reality they represent is the same. Why couldn’t Christianity have had vision enough to see this?”Cold Coffee Press endorses Veronica’s Papers by A. Colin Wright as a thought-provoking work of literature that raises the question of whether or not “creation, fantasy and truth are the same”. We received this book in a Kindle/PDF format. This review was completed on October 31, 2015.

A. Colin Wright was born and raised in the county of Essex, England. After serving as a linguist in the British Royal Air Force, Wright attended Cambridge University where he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees. In 1964, he was appointed a professor of Russian at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He remained at Queen's until his retirement in 1999 and still resides there today. Dr. Wright is married and has two grown sons.
 
In his fiction he is interested primarily in works dealing with the purpose and meaning of life. Thus he has a horror of post-modernism and simple, sentimental descriptions of everyday life, and has little interest in works dealing with specific problems. Religion in its broadest sense (but not that of specific churches or creeds) is obviously important to him. He tries above all to create a good story, with realistic characters who question established norms of behaviour, with particular reference to the sexual.
 
He acts and directs in the local theatre.
 
With a love of languages (he speaks English, French, German, Russian and Italian, with a smattering of Spanish and Scots Gaelic), he is adamant about correct grammar in his writing. This unfortunately also makes him highly critical of others!
 
He also loves travel and has led various groups for Craig Travel in Toronto to Russia, Ukraine, China, South Africa, Southern India, Alaska and the islands of the North Atlantic.