Cross-Purposes: or The Adultery Club or Rolling at the Ball

This novel moves beyond the largely autobiographical concerns of John O Loughlin s earlier experiments in the genre 'Changing Worlds' and 'Fixed Limits' - towards a more imaginatively fictional integrity which led him by the nose, so to speak, into contexts and situations largely outside the domain of his personal experience. To be sure, the subjectivity of his earlier work is still, to some degree, present (witness the opening chapter ... with its highly philosophical considerations and private reflections), but it is now subordinated to the unfolding narrative ... as we follow the fortunes of James Kelly, a self-styled philosopher, through successive love-affairs which clash with his loyalties to friends and benefactors alike, culminating in deception and tragedy for all concerned. One would think that CROSS-PURPOSES was a philosophical-novel-turned-romance, and so, up to a point, it may well be. But it is also a tribute, in no small measure, to the genius of both Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller; though one might be forgiven for detecting an implicit condemnation of the latter in the 'Paris chapter', as Mr. O Loughlin likes to think of Chapter 7, where Kelly's attitude to sexual promiscuity is concerned! However, that is still his favourite chapter in what is probably his most adventurous novel. - A Centretruths editorial.