Description
Book Synopsis“Reading Tableaux was like revisiting old haunts, or places I would have liked to have haunted. It sparked visceral sense memories and made me nostalgic. And the ending …” – Midori
It is 1984, the year of Ronald Reagan’s re-election and the Brighton bomb; one can sense revolution in the air. Oliver Woolf is a thirty-something journalist, well-connected socially, and an instinctual conservative, whose comfortable routine is upset by a chance encounter in the rain. The girl in the rain is Candy, who is not what she first seems. Over the summer, Oliver and Candy form an unlikely friendship, and when she stops calling on him, he sets out to find her. His search leads him through a labyrinthine underworld that extends from London to Manhattan. Along the way, he meets someone who will change his life forever. A late-twentieth century Rake’s Progress, Oliver’s journey confronts issues that are still largely taboo. Illustrated with photographs by Steve Diet Goedde, Tableaux combines art and storytelling in a new hybrid form.
Trade Review"Tableaux is primarily a fictionalised memoir of real events experienced by its author in 1984/’85, reprocessed as the experiences of his fictional protagonist, journalist Oliver Woolf. Yes, it is an exploration of Oliver’s journey of sexual experimentation and his various brushes with BDSM culture. And yes, it includes well-described visits to real clubs such as Maitresse in London and Hellfire in New York. But the author’s descriptions of successive scenes (which presumably suggested the book’s title) are all presented with a lightness of touch and sense of balance that are so rare in the genre. As a result, the story unfolds in a way that feels genuinely organic and uncontrived." - Tony Mitchell, The Fetishistas
