Nature

Jacqueline Ann Christodoulou PhD

Freelance writer and research psychologist

Dirty Sparkle

Dirty Sparkle is the first in a series of five novels that follows the lives of ordinary women and examines the dialectical nature of their lives. Dirty Sparkle is concerned with the sex/love dialectic and uses extreme characterisation to get the message across. Set in inner-city Manchester, Dirty Sparkle dips into the feelings and emotions of the left-over Hacienda generation and examines what their lives have become.

For any interested agents or publishers out there who are eager to find bright new talent, here is the synopsis for the novel (give me a call!):

‘Dirty Sparkle’ follows a week in the lives of women who are not quite what they appear to be. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll force their way into these women’s lives just when they think all is going well.
Charlotte Bradley and Louise Reed run an outsize clothes shop. They are also dominatrix, working from a small dungeon underneath the shop in a regeneration area of central Manchester. They have angered Sean Lynch, a local club owner, leaving him gagged and bound in an Edinburgh hotel room and he’s out for revenge, further fuelled by Louise spurning his advances. Charlotte’s wealthy ex-pop star boyfriend, Mark Feely, becomes enmeshed in the battle to recover incriminating photographs of the pair. Unknown to Charlotte, Mark is involved in a drug dealing relationship with Sean.
A fire at Charlotte’s home, accidentally started by Sean Lynch, is the catalyst for discovery Mark and inadvertently finds out his girlfriend’s paid occupation when the emergency services break open Charlotte’s wardrobe. Sean then terrorises the women and they find that they must seek refuge somewhere safe. Sean’s teenage daughter Kalisha Lynch turns up unexpectedly at Louise’s house and announces that she is pregnant. In a tryst with Louise’s daughters, she refuses to go home leaving Louise and Charlotte with no choice but to hide at Charlotte’s near-alcoholic mother’s house. This is highly inconvenient as Charlotte and her mother Juliet are locked in opposition about Juliet’s boyfriend enjoying Charlotte’s services, and the morals around this. In a further revelation, Juliet tells Charlotte that Kalisha is her sister, the child that Sean snatched at birth. Sean embarks on a search for his errant daughter and finds himself confronted by a missing truth in the form of advice from a Bangladeshi shopkeeper, the paternal grandfather to Kalisha’s child.
The novel focuses on the relationship between Sean Lynch and Juliet Bradley, both in the past and in the present, culminating in a violent confrontation between them. The examination of their lives in the present day highlights the longevity of the damage done in early relationships and the effects of obsession. Both consider suicide but Sean triumphs with an overdose of illegal drugs and Juliet is eventually freed from the burden he placed on her. Charlotte Bradley’s relationship with Mark Feely and her loyalties to Louise Reed are also examined around the connotations of the sex industry and fame. Charlotte and Mark eventually part ways as she realises his true motives and that he is in league with Sean.
Louise and Charlotte’s involvement in the sex industry and Juliet’s enchantment with a naive fairy-tale attachment to notions of romantic love provide an arena to observe ‘pro-choice or no-choice’ feminist values. The embedded relationships in the story examine the different levels of analysis operated by people and how they impact on their interrelatedness. Located around inner-city Manchester, the story examines the outcome of the Hacienda left-over generation and their desperation to either keep their culture alive or to block out the past.
With more twists and turns than an Isle of Man ‘A’ road, this novel is both grounded in everyday life and makes a comment on the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ of women’s identity. ‘Dirty Sparkle’ examines the Sex/Love dialectic of identity and how it operates in the real world.

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