Mai's Wedding

This is a story that must engage your intuition not your logical mind; it speaks to the heart, to the spirit and to a sixth sense whose sphere is almost entirely behind the scenes and whose interactions are with the world unseen. It is the age old story of good versus evil, but it is not a simple tale of black and white, it is more an exploration of Yin and Yang. As the story unfolds, it brings into focus the pearlescent seed of light in the very heart of darkness and the ink black hole of destruction that resides in even the purest of souls. The setting is a deeply rural coastal community. Into one household on the cusp of the New Year Michael, writer, poet and something other, introduces the elemental Mai, a child woman with an enigmatic past. She is fey, fickle and fated; destined to become both catalyst and rite of passage. In the battle ground of her soul the need to belong and the need to be free are locked in a struggle for supremacy. Central to the unfolding of the plot is a mushroom, a psychedelic whose mind altering properties are not only dangerously effective but whose spiritual potency is so powerful that it attracts the deeply negative attentions of the sinister and manipulative MacCauseland. Those that are drawn to him learn to regret it. Each character, however unwittingly, has a part to play towards salvation or damnation. John Moat’s depiction of the people of this rural community has all the lyrical poetry of the beautiful Under Milk Wood; he captures perfectly the fleeting and mercurial nature of the thought process and its impact on the uncertain choices of the heart. His evocative and spellbinding descriptions of the sea, the countryside and the wildlife, are so finely drawn and so minutely observed as can only be achieved by a deep love for, and attunement to the natural world. After reading this book rain will never be just rain again; it will have layers of sound it will have a nature, it will have a colour.Although this story is redolent with loss... the loss of innocence, of the unborn, of love, it also brims with hope, with the power of redemption and with the potential of new beginnings. It reminds us that the mythic has meaning; that we are capable of so much more than merely tending to the mechanics of existence and that life is a glorious mystery.