And Lead Us Not... — Sean O'Brien

Narrated in the first person, 'And Lead Us Not...' is a powerful and erotic human drama, intimately told. Callum has a comfortable life with his partner Julia and their small group of professional friends in suburban South Manchester, 'no kids' baby boomers drifting aimlessly into middle age. Then there is Sian... 'And Lead Us Not...' is a study of the power of sexual desire, the artlessness of love, the selfishness of lovers. It charts the journey of a man enthralled and entangled, abandoned to his passionate affair with a highly sexual woman. The fragility of 'normality' and the brittleness of the human psyche emerge in stark relief as Callum tells his tale. His candid reflections, self-deprecating irony, it is a story of a man 'lost in love'... or in something anyway, his lies, his rapture, his struggle to make sense of things, to survive, to find redemption. It is also a story of friendship and normal life...the life that 'goes on', funny and moving, maddening shallowness and real pathos as the denouement unwinds. Of course, there is sex; it is Callum's preoccupation; he leaves little unsaid...