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Alison Little talks us through the influences behind her novel: Causal Nexus and her hopes for the future of the works.

The initial motivation to pen Causal Nexus was rapidly prior to reading Nathan Fillers Costa 2013 Book of the year: ‘The shock of the Fall’. Submerged by the vividly pragmatic fiction, Filer bestows an authentic and convincing depiction of how schizophrenia develops and consumes a person. Alison has encountered, through vocation and her personal life, many who have been diagnosed with schizophrenia and has unmasks the disease through the middle brother: Callum. She has portrayed a character whose boyhood is broken and development was re-shape as a result of the condition.

The Shock of the Fall, Nathan Filer

Akin to the contemporary works she re-visited a more established classic: William Goldings ‘Lord of the Flies’. Crediting points of violence, what divides boyhood rucks from extremely harmful aggression? Through Causal Nexus she has interpreted these portrayals. In the teenage clash on the banks of the canal we observe a run-of-the-mill adolescent comeback to a peer fashioning a sexual remark over his mothers bosom. Escalating into a teenage brawl, however,  the boys in the group are able to control the fracass. This scene is in arrant contrast to the affray in ‘Mums gone to Iceland’. We are presented with a representation of inherent violence in Jack’s battlement with his more youthful sibling Callum. He goads him monstrously, tormenting his mark, utilising Sal as a ruse. Callum endures the impossibility of withdrawal from the weightier, verile brother and sustains abrasions including chafed carpet burn. Granted, this was restricted from culmination, by Dad’s shrewd foresight, we observe the trepidation Callum and Sal lived under from Jack depravity. 

Sexual Villainy

The crux of the narrative pivots around sex villainy and thereupon rape survivors are emphatically failed by the authorities. Alison is a committed activist, confronting all, from rape culture to the legislation which pass though the House. A core member of the organising committee for Reclaim the night Liverpool and has attended campaign bootcamp as a participant then as a workshop leader for the Annual conference held immediately prior to the pandemic in 2020. Throughout the novel she gives a candid account of childhood sexual abuse, rape and ultimately murder. The deficiencies of the Police Force are defined through many of the individuals manifest throughout the novel. Devi, in particular, portrays a Police Woman, warped through her conduct with severely debilitated control issues. In this she willfully misdirects the rape investigation on numerous occasions, her impetus being merely to come across as valis with no sensibilities of remorse for her devilment. 

Alison has great aspirations for Causal Nexus, more than any literary accreditation that comes from publishing a novel, sales targets and profit margins that she can evoke change through Causal Nexus. In the wake of changed being forced on the authorities in response the the rape and murder of Sarah Everett by Wayne Cousins, a serving Metropolitan Police Officer her novel can intensify this pressure. The publication cannot end rape, but it can effect the way in which sex crimes are being handled by public protection agencies in the UK and Globally. 

The publication cannot end rape, but it can effect the way in which sex crimes are being handled by public protection agencies in the UK and Globally. 

Alison Little

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