Eleonora Duse spends her whole career producing, directing and acting in the great female roles of the theatrical repertoire. She claims that when she is not on stage, she does not exist. A poet publishes a novel in which an aging actress’s only role is to be a young poet’s muse. The publication of the novel is a crisis for La Duse as the fictional portrait of a pathetic, clinging female threatens to fill the void and become her personal myth in the public mind. But her greatest fear is that the imagery of the poet’s book will alter the way she thinks of herself.

Together, this novel and the accompanying journal and notebook comprise the twenty-seventh installment in an ongoing novel-writing project in which the author is exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st century. All of the published journals and notebooks are available for free download at www.johnpassfield.ca.