This is the cover of my dad’s latest novel, Whispers In Empty Rooms. Pretty cool cover, right? I think it’s pretty cool.
I am recommending you buy this book. You can do that by going here.
Now, there is no denying that my father is my father, and I will not insult your intelligence by pretending that this fact is not connected to the fact I’m recommending you buy his book. I mean, I didn’t use my Substack to recommend you buy The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, and I won’t deny that my failure to do so had something to do with the fact that Mark Haddon is NOT my father.
But Mark Haddon can take care of himself: my dad needs the publicity more than he does.
And the fact is that I think you’ll enjoy Whispers In Empty Rooms. It’s murder, it’s mystery, it’s fun, you see. You’ll have fun reading it.
But I don’t just want to plug my dad’s book. I also want to tell you something about my dad, and how this book came about.
Les Pobjie has written a few novels in the last few years, as his sight has been deteriorating. This latest one was written entirely by dictation - my dad is pretty much completely blind, and he will never see a single word in his new book. It was all spoken into a recorder and painstakingly sculpted into a real honest-to-god book with the help of transcription software and a family of proofreaders.
I reckon that’s a pretty spectacular achievement. Writing a book isn’t easy. Writing a book when you can’t see is even less easy. When you read the book you’ll realise the way it was written has a connection to the story too, and that my dad’s condition gives him insights that allowed him to tell this story this way. I think he’s done brilliantly.
Besides being blind, my dad has Charles Bonnet Syndrome. This is a condition which sometimes occurs in people who go through significant vision loss. Basically, it involves the brain, as it adapts to the change, generating visual hallucinations.
Practically, what this means is that though my father can’t see anything around him, sometimes he does see things: he sees groups of soldiers in green, or girls in dresses, or a wall across a highway. Often it’s cartoon characters: he frequently sees the Road Runner standing before him.
For people with CBS, it’s pretty unnerving to see this stuff pop into sight. It’s also incredibly fascinating and tells us something about the mysterious workings of the human brain - though it’s unsure just what that something might be yet.
It’s estimated up to 30 percent of people with significant vision loss will experience Charles Bonnet Syndrome. It’s difficult to be precise though, because a lot of people are reluctant to admit that they are having these hallucinations, in case people think they’re going crazy. But CBS is a condition of perfectly mentally healthy people - it’s just the brain throwing up images from the deep well within it, in the absence of actual visual data from outside.
You can learn more about CBS here. It’s a condition that needs a lot of further study, and that will require a lot more public awareness, so spread the word.
What I’m saying is, my dad - a veteran writer, photojournalist and newspaper editor, who’s gone blind and every now and then sees the Road Runner - is a preternaturally interesting guy, which is why he’s been able to write such an interesting book. To remind you: buy it here.
(Also if you want to support the whole family, buy a book by me, or by my sister)