February 2022

Simon Astaire is well known for his four novels, starting with Private Privilege (2008) and more recently The Last Photograph (2013), from which he adapted the screenplay for the film of the same name directed by and starring Danny Huston. Now his collaboration with Bill Jacklin RA has produced the illustrated novella Cressida’s Dream, currently on show at Ordovas, Savile Row. 

The bright yellow jacket of Cressida's Dream alerts you to the bright and interesting contents within it’s covers. Here, as with Simon Astaire’s previous novels, he is tackling life’s big themes of love, grieving, loss and death, all distilled into a delightful narrative that speaks to us of sensory worlds. We savour his favourite scents and flowers as he hones these sensitive subjects with pinpoint accuracy, humour and grace.  

The book's illustrations are by Bill Jacklin, whose prior graphic works and paintings of urban New York landscapes have long been critically acclaimed. Utilizing his unfailing grasp of light, shade and movement, his illustrations bear great effect on the train journey that Cressida’s father takes from a cathedral like station to an unknown destination with the mysterious characters he meets along the tracks.

At the fascinating talk between the author and the painter at Ordovas earlier in February, Simon revealed he dreamt of going to heaven on a train since he was a boy. “Then I had a daughter, I liked the idea of a man going to heaven on a train and looking out of the window and not seeing the countryside he’s expecting to see, but looking down on earth and sees that his daughter is in trouble.”

Despite his physical change and uncertainty, Cressida’s father watches over her from the privileged position of simultaneously considering his other-worldly state and reflecting on the earthly life he has left behind. His travelling exploration of dual states is reminiscent of Emmanuel Swedenbourg’s visions of the afterlife in De Telluribus (1758) which shook the establishment in Sweden at the time. 

Astaire's fellow Gemini Charles Dickens used duality, dreams and time shifts to determine the fate of Scrooge and Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol (1843). Similarly, playing with time is not a new trick for Simon, and in Cressida’s Dream he shifts space too. This connects the narrator to a long view of our planet in the context of climate change, deforestation and the toxic backlash of rapid industrialism slowly killing us. He said, “There are some references to the apocalyptic, what we are doing to the oceans for instance, but on the whole, it’s pretty positive.”

The action on earth takes place on the Kent Coast and in London, where Cressida’s headmaster has broken the news of her father’s death. Unsure how to handle her emotions, he assigns her schoolmate, Tom, an almost angelic presence, to look after the grieving girl. 

Tom, his dog Lola, and Cressida form a close attachment and he begins to suspect she has special powers on a trip to Margate where Cressida, a dual character, transforms into a selkie, or seal-woman, as she speeds over the waves.

A big influence on Simon was Harold Pressburger’s film A Matter of Life and Death (1946) in which David Niven’s character has the opportunity to return to earth on a deadline. Cressida’s father has an hour on earth to warn her, through Tom, to leave London and head to Broadstairs where they might escape the swarms of genetically enhanced bird-size mosquitos feasting on everything pumping blood in their path. 

Cressida’s Dream is an invitation to engage with the elements, the senses, and the imagination. Honestly, who hasn’t dreamt about having a secret superpower or being a superhero? The primacy of water and the impossibility of life without it is celebrated in this illustrated book in the finest hues of green and blue. In tender moments, father and daughter evoke John Masefield’s Sea Fever, a salt-water ballad of longing for the oceans. Later, Cressida commands the air and the waves in her battle with the mosquito birds. 

Bill Jacklin is an artist at work and at play in this novella, and an astounding array of creatures populate his illustrations, notably Mosquito Birds, Creature in the Sea, Dolphins and the Palaces of Westminster and Chimera, all executed in 2021. Equally impressive is the range of mediums: oils, pastels, watercolours and monotypes. The exquisitely coloured illustrations come alive in the current exhibition, telling a story in themselves.

The story evolved over the long lockdowns with Simon in London and Bill in Rhode Island. Unlike most conventional writer/illustrator collaborations Simon didn’t present Bill with a fully formed version of the book, and he is not sure it would look the same if he had. Bill said freedom came when he found visual equivalents to the words that inspired his illustrations, and the illustrations inspired the story as it developed organically.

The beauty of gardens feature in the double page watercolours of Cressida’s Garden and The Garden of Eden glowing off the page. Voltaire used the metaphor of the garden as a place of sanctuary, evoking feelings of peace, rest and safety to which Candide returns after wandering the world. Simon uses the garden as a place of transformation, a clue to Cressida’s burgeoning powers, and as a panoply of nature's delights.

“God is nature, nature is god, this is what it’s about, why don’t people recognise that, to me it’s shouting at me. I appreciate nature more than I ever did and spend more time in it than before lockdown,”  Simon said. The book optimistically recognises we all come from the same source. But with that comes a shared responsibility for the planet, which begins with the first step of accepting that there are problems. This perspective is far advanced of Mr Coles (2011), a character in Simon’s previous novel who is entrenched in a life of denial.

Cressida’s Dream makes no religious claims of the existence of a god in heaven or of a paradise lauded by poets and misappropriated by religious fundamentalists. Instead, it offers palpable glimpses into worlds beyond ours, some beautiful and some not, from an author who is convinced of where he is going. “And maybe at the end of the story the character meets God, maybe he doesn’t.” Simon concluded. 

And isn’t that the story of all our lives.

Cressida's Dream on sale: https://www.ordovasart.com/publication/cressidas-dream-2/

Illustrations on view at Ordovas, 25 Savlle Row 3 February- 22nd April 2022.