Living Without Blood

About the Book

Co-protagonists and old friends Eric Metcalf and Richard Barnes are thirty-something men in an early stage of estrangement from one another. Both are struggling with early-to-mid adulthood: with women, career disappointments, the distance of fathers. Eric is solipsistic yet brave; Richard externalizes with drugs, women, and betrays friends. When Eric chooses a radical change in career, he contemplates severing a long-standing dependency upon his family, but in so doing draws intensified concern due to a self-destructive past. Meanwhile, the alcoholic misadventure of his father leads that character to enter psychotherapy: the subsequent self reflection enables an honest but dangerous reciprocity within the family.

Reviews:

Graeme Daniels ventures into literary territory that distinctly echoes Henry James in both style and theme. His debut novel, Living Without Blood, explores the phenomena of consciousness, perception, personal relationships, and the shifting balance of power between human beings.

Using an imaginative blend of interior monologue, exterior dialogue, and variable points of view, Daniels explores the minds of men teetering on the edge of clandestine maturity. A perfect book for those cerebrally-oriented readers wrestling, like characters Eric Metcalf and Richard Barnes, with the moral conundrum that is 21st century living.

Reviewed by Joan Gold,
freelance journalist and Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist

About the Author

Graeme Daniels has been a practicing psychotherapist for twelve years, working extensively with groups, families, and individuals. He balances private practice in Pleasant Hill, California with duties as an Intern Supervisor at The Thunder Road Substance Abuse Treatment Center in Oakland, California. He has previously written academic articles pertaining to addiction, group process, and self disorders, all of which can be read by accessing his website www.selfinaddiction.com. Graeme lives in Pleasant Hill with his wife of five years, Maria Jimenez. Living without Blood is his first novel.