For the Moment

For the Moment, Book 2 of This Spirited Village, returns to a small household and village in Indonesia, where family dramas, weddings, land, rubbish, quarrels, spirits and the habits of everyday life become material for reflection on attachment, change and the elusive business of living well.

The narrator withdraws from public noise into the apparently modest world close at hand: a wife, an extended family, a patch of land, a village spring, neighbours, disputes and the recurring presence of the dead. Yet little stays modest for long. A campaign against discarded rubbish becomes an exercise in futility and self-examination; a wedding brings jealousy, ceremony and family politics; dreams and revenants mingle easily with practical matters; and the absurdities of social life continually interrupt attempts at serenity.

Comic, digressive and reflective, For the Moment moves between domestic observation and philosophical enquiry, treating the everyday as both spectacle and teacher. Beneath the bustle runs a quieter concern with retreat, impermanence, rebirth and the possibility of loosening one's grip on the self.