Eclipse

Alexander Cleave - a famous actor who "took to the stage to give myself a cast of characters to inhabit who would be...of more weight and moment than I could ever hope to be" - faces the almost certain collapse of his 39-year career. In physical and psychological retreat, he returns to his abandoned childhood home, believing that, away from his wife and daughter, away from the world at large, alone, without an audience of any kind, he might finally stop performing, catch himself in the act of living and simply "be." 212p.