In Meditation on Space-Time, Leonard Seet portrays Father Lawrence’s struggle between solitude and engagement to show that no man is an island. The monk’s love for his friends Ichiro and Camellia compelled him to confront the evil Jim Whitfield while his desire to contemplate space-time drew him into the cabin in the woods.
Even as Father Lawrence was hearing the stranger’s confession, he dreamed of probability waves, black holes and temporal loops. He came to Gilead to search for his friend Camellia, not to hear about this penitent’s vices: seducing women, framing rivals and laundering church-funds. After he had chased the penitent through the sanctuary into the church graveyard and lost the man, he found a note that revealed a connection to Camellia.
When he learned that Camellia was pregnant with this man’s child, he knew the time to play ostrich was over. But ever since the girl whom he had counseled, committed suicide, he preferred distancing himself from others than engaging their struggles. And ever since falling out with his best friend, he preferred contemplating the duality of space-time to sorting out his own joy and grief and love and hatred. If only he could free himself from his emotional scum… if only he could marshal the courage to polish off his search for enlightenment…
He would discover the hidden identities behind each face and Camellia’s helping the villain to bring him down. When faced with betrayal, he would lock himself in his cabin and struggled between retreating to his meditation on space-time and confronting the villain. He would renounce his vow and learn to equate a dollar with a cheeseburger. He would buy a gun without knowing how to load the magazine. He would search for his enemy. But when faced with the gun barrel, Father Lawrence would have to contemplate death… only to hear the three shots that saluted the dark night…
Either mercy or justice; either salvation or friendship. Either choice: a flawed solution for a fallen man in a broken world.
Meditation On Space-Time portrays a man’s struggle to discover himself in contemporary society, to sacrifice for his friends, to take the road less traveled. For adult readers who, while sifting through clues to the characters’ true identities and hidden agendas, would savor the hero’s every morsel of laughter and tear as if it were bittersweet chocolate.
“Leonard Seet has left no literary devices on the table to narrate his tale…I was enthralled by the pure beauty of the writing among all the plot points. The scintillating writing is elegant, pure, grownup, originally cast, heartfelt, intelligent… The writing is simply breathtaking… brilliant bit of poetic science… If you prefer intelligently crafted novels, then do yourself a favor and by all means read this unforgettable novel by Leonard Seet: the writing is to die for.” -David Lentz, author, Bloomsday: the Bostoniad
Leonard Seet's short fictions have appeared in the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and Banana Writers. He learned the art of writing from Brando Skyhorse and Tim Johnston through George Washington University's Jennie McKean Moore Fiction Workshop, which is by application.
