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While mainly known as a poet, Ron Riddell’s highly readable and thought-provoking novels are finding an increasing and interested following.
A Love Beyond is Ron Riddell’s second novel. In it he elaborates on aspects of the themes of love, destiny, displacement and the quest for fulfilment. A Love Beyond begins with the exploration of a secret, unrequited love that had been all-but-forgotten but the two main protagonists, Duncan McKenzie and Celia Debrett. However, as a chance meeting in an Edinburgh café twenty years on reveals, the hope and memory of this attraction has never been completely abandoned. In its psycho-political aspect this enthralling new novel also contains elements of the psychological thriller. In the cultural, historical and familial spheres, the novel further explores the many such links between Scotland and New Zealand.
ISBN: 978-958-8466-05-7
$NZ 30.00
Twenty Years On
Duncan McKenzie was a man who lived by cheese. His business was the purveying of cheese, of New World origin, though much of it went by names that were borrowed from the great European traditions: Cheddar, Gruyere, Emmentaler, Feta, Havarti, Gouda and Blue Vein. He counted himself lucky to have a career that was also a passion. His devotion to cheese had carried him a long way.
Now, at last, he found himself walking the streets of a long-held dream, the streets of Edinburgh, Auld Reekie, Athens of the North, ancestral seat and original Dunedin. He, Duncan McKenzie, born 1939 in Northland, New Zealand, was not just a tourist in town but a man with a mission. Cheese was in the air. As he strolled, light-footed from Princes Street up to the Royal Mile, Duncan was a man whose thoughts were centred on curds and whey and their multifarious derivatives.
However, while Duncan McKenzie had a natural, commodious love of cheese, his passion for cheesecake was sometimes wild, unpredictable. Not just any old cheesecake - nothing too sweet, nothing too gooey, but a flan with élan. His passion was occasioned by cheesecake with style, cheesecake with breeding. He could spot one a good city block or two distant.
And so it was, as he wended his way up through Canongate, he happened to spy just such a puddin' - a Scottish cheesecake of indisputable class, distinction. There it was, in its plain and simple proof, sitting in the window of The Café Caledonia. He needed no further invitation, not even the fragrant aroma of cappuccino that came wafting through the cafe door. He was over the threshold in the twinkling of an eye, cappuccino and cheesecake soon in hand.
He guided himself to a table near the window. His desert fork plunged into the generous portion that quivered on his plate. He ate with abandon, with unreserved relish, that is, until he realised he was being observed. Slowly he put his fork down, brought his napkin up to his lips, dabbing the corners of his mouth. He looked up.
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