kate barnwell

Mothy Chambers

How often do you question your place in your world?
What is your role in the lives of people you know?
Mothy Chambers is a sixteen year old schoolboy in England in the sixties, full of questions and ready for a challenge.  The suppressed volcano of adolescent vigour about to erupt in the lives of frustrated youth bypasses public school and so slaps young Mothy hard when he is released into a world where life and language are changing.  
Packed off by his indifferent family to learn French in the small southern town of Collioure he meets the mesmeric Bette who prompts more questions than answers. She too is newly arrived and has just married Philly who is besotted both with Bette and the magic of the skies and solar system…so unique to the area.  This town has lured the creative and famous for decades, and people who are always both different and unusual.  Their innovative artistic talents were diverse and complex, breaking boundaries and influencing and re-shaping the artistic world. Mothy spends three months immersing himself in a capsule life of observation and learning, becoming part of the magnetic energy and the live of the inhabitants of this special town.  
Caught in the light of such talented predecessors Mothy then returns to England and his struggle for self-worth. He continues his peripatetic career but still finds no answer to his role in life.
After a decade of confiding correspondence with Bette he makes an uncharacteristic, sudden decision to return to Collioure.  Travelling with his best friend Woof, with whom he shared his school life and with whom he has remained in touch, the two of them take on the fun of the drive through France – building, as Mothy thought, on their bond of friendship.  This journey in June brought his return to a Collioure of warmth and light.   Mothy takes a lone, late, reminiscent walk around the town, acting as an invisible observer.  When, the next day, they  meet Bette and Philly, Mothy finds himself an onlooker to a relationship he thought was his own.  Fighting his calm, natural instincts, Mothy is beset by jealousy and resentment leading him to a world of lonely introspection.   
Thirty years later a letter arrives and so does a package, and without malice or anger, Mothy Chambers finds the explanation to his role in life.

About the author
Mothy Chambers is Kate’s second novel…. following on from two highly acclaimed poetry books. An intriguing idea, as always, set in places Kate knows well.
Academically Kate studied Fine and Decorative Arts and worked in galleries in London then decided to pursue her love of writing. Her first poetry book (A Collection of Poems & Lyrics) is an eclectic mix of fun, laughter, love and tears as all the greatest poetry is…but her second (Ever Truly Yours) takes its title from John Keats farewell to the love of his life…this collection is of love in all its form and gives the reader a poem and a moment for every emotion in life. (‘to be kept by the bed forever…’)
The Case of Aleister Stratton is Kate’s first novella and lures the reader with a strange and subtle strength into the potential depths of danger offered by the imagination and the mind. Shivvers down the spine.
Kate’s new novel A Worldly Tale Told of Mothy Chambers starts in a seemingly innocent world of adolescent love but leads the reader into a more complex series of relationships. Mothy asks questions of himself that we all must ask at some time in life…what is our role? Where do we fit in?
What is it about this time and this place and this person?