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LOVE TRADED SHORT
Martin Knox’s novel Short of Love traces Tom’s and Patti’s relationship from a UK university in the Beatles era to recent times.
Tom’s priority is his career and when he meets Vicki he is distracted.
When a relationship with her would be too demanding, he places her in a holding relationship with his flat mate, until later when she should become available on better terms, like in a commodity short? It is a solution that reveals his nerdy philosophical imagination.
He goes to work as an engineer in Canada and waits for terms with her to improve. He achieves a top management position and strives to connect with her, despite several accidents which keep them apart.
This is a fictional rendition based on a true story which reveals how love can have conditions that create difficult choices and unexpected consequences, revealing controversial ethics in the international petroleum industry.
Available on Amazon. Reviews: mertinknox.com
THE SLAP AND SHORT OF LOVE
My novel Short of Love (2018) is compared below with ‘The Slap’ by Christos Tsiolkas (2008).
His book is a bestseller and has been made into a movie mini-series (2011). I like the book very much.
Genre of ‘The Slap’ is urban psychological fiction. The genre of Short of Love is fictionalised autobiography in an epic thriller. The two books are similar in that both stories narrate events subsequent to unusual incidents that are pivotal in causing social groups to disintegrate.
The Slap is set in an urban tribe in Melbourne having a microcosm of social ills, family loyalties, passions and dysfunctional relationships. An incident mars a family gathering and the aftermath destabilises their lives.
Short of Love is set in England and Canada, beginning with Tom as a schoolboy and following the threads of his dysfunctional relationship with his crush, Vicki and his career as an engineer and corporate executive until his retirement. Tom is tricked to take a lie detector test and again when he trades Vicki in a ‘short’ deal with a friend, as a commodity to acquire later. The book satirizes conventional love relationships but the strategies backfire disastrously, blowing him and Vicki apart. He gains a top job in Canada but Vicki, a school counsellor, stays in England. On the rebound he marries Ruth, expecting to resume with Vicki later.
The books are pre-occupied with consequences of traumas affecting lives of the characters in unpredictable ways. The reader will be entertained in The Slap by the misbehaviour of suburbanites. Short of Love recounts antics of irrepressible university students in Liverpool in the Beatles era, later as hippies and then as vulnerable obsessive adults in a fast-moving page turner.
Short of Love is an unconventional story recording morals that changed with the times. The focus is on Tom’s relationship with Vicki and it keeps the reader guessing. It is a tantalizing love story with an unexpected ending.
Available from Amazon. Reviews at https://martinknox.com
Short of Love
Short of Love is a satirical fiction novel telling of Tom’s loves and career from school, university, oilfield engineering to Chief Executive Officer of an international oil company. He falls for Vicki in an agonising love story when he is studying hard and tries to put her off until later, like in a commodity short. They are brought together in an African country and oppose famine and exploitation. It is a fast-moving page-turning love story from the Beatles era to recent times.
http://www.martinknox.wordpress.com
WHAT IS A FAIR PRICE FOR OIL?
Dairy farmers get a price for milk that is held down by oligopsony, agreement between a small number of buyers for their product. For stability of supply, the price has to recompense investment. Oil exporting countries get a price for oil that is held down by oligopsony, agreement between major oil importing companies. For stability of supply, the price has to recompense investment and also anticipate the depletion of petroleum resources with oil supply running out. For example, a higher price could be demanded to fund diversification into agriculture. Oil has varied per barrel between $20 in 1997, $160 in 2008, and $60 today.
Is the ethical position of companies buying oil different from supermarkets buying milk? Who will provide for oil exporters to transition away from oil when it runs out?
Novel ‘$hort of Love’ is about love set in the international oil industry, with some relationship and oil supply dilemmas considered in a satirical commodity framework.
