Helen Walsh – the founder and president of Diaspora Dialogues and a former film / digital media producer – has released her debut novel – Pull Focus, a dizzyingly pacy thriller that infuses a huge amount of issues into its pages to create a complex and interesting novel. Pick up a copy here.
Helen Walsh has released her debut novel – Pull Focus – that is a delightfully addictive thriller. The book tells the story of Jane who has been appointed as interim director of the Worldwide Toronto Film Festival after her boss has been removed for sexual harassment. No easy role, but made the more complicated when her partner goes missing and she is repeatedly threatened by strange women at the festival. In the dark as to what is going on with her partner and facing a numerous amount of fires to burn during the festival itself, Jane works to understand who are her true allies and enemies in this complicated fabric of the film and finance industry.
The novel is as addictive as they come, painting a detailed and rich picture of the complications of the film industry. Walsh paints her characters with real poise and art, with recognisable but not caricatured characters. The novel is amazingly propulsive, taking a huge amount of different issues as its theme. Although, perhaps, Walsh could have done with stripping the maze of plot lines back – at times it is difficult to unravel the multiple threads and mysteries – she does an incredible job of leading the reader through the story. A masterclass debut that shows Walsh as a talent to watch.
