This book is magical and extraordinary, as is the author, her daughter and her grandfather. I feel like I know them all, though we’ve never met. I’m unable to give an objective opinion because this book and her debut How to Be Brave will forever be etched in my heart and mind as books that evoked an experience that I now have a personal connection to.

A Dedication

I Am Dust was dedicated by Louise Beech to my 17 year old daughter Allia Jen who passed away suddenly in Aug 2019 as the last chapters to this book were being written.

Like Louise’s daughter, Allia Jen lived with the daily grind (4 injections/day) of Type 1 diabetes. Louise’s excellent novel How to Be Brave (about a daughter’s challenging diagnosis and an arduous ‘lost at sea’ survival story inspired by her own Grandad Colin’s war story), was my reading choice when Jen had corrective back surgery for scoliosis in 2016.

We experienced a kind of psychic connection as that book took us on a trip, me experiencing symptoms of being lost at sea and for Allia Jen, the post midnight, morphine-induced presence of three beings with “strange English accents” present in the room. ‘It was Granddad Colin’, I said.

Jen loved the theatre, it was their favourite holiday activity, signing up for week long, full day theatre activities, mostly improvisation, rarely scripted. At first it seemed incomprehensible, having spent six years of primary school mute, never speaking in class, to school friends, or the teacher. And then wanting to sign up for theatre? Yes, but never with friends or anyone who Jen knew and I was requested not to attend the final show. I didn’t mind. I loved that she’d found her voice, was projecting it on stage and had found a new community of like-minded souls.

So ‘I Am Dust‘, a suspenseful, teen drama with a psychic element and a protagonist whose great love is the theatre, a character who is creative and doesn’t recognise her own talent, is a magical and meaningful gift to a mother who totally gets it.

The power is in us all along.

Book Review: I Am Dust

The novel is written in a past/present dual narrative.  In 2005 we meet Chloe, Jess and Ryan, teenagers in a youth theatre group that is rehearsing Macbeth; alternate chapters bring us to present day 2019 where Chloe works as an usher at the Dean Wilson Theatre, Jess is now the actress ‘Ginger’ and no-one has seen or heard of Ryan since that summer of Macbeth.

Morbid curiosity, youthful bravado and teenage love had joined the three of them, on a dusty stage in a church.

The theatre is believed to be haunted by long-dead actress Morgan Miller who played the lead in the opening premiere of the musical ‘Dust’ a season that ended after four nights due to the tragedy.

The teens had been involved in a spooky game after hours, each of them with an ulterior motive; as the narrative progresses in the present, Chloe recalls what happened in the past, things she’d forgotten.

For some reason when Chloe chatted with Jess, a void cracked open and memories Chloe hadn’t known were there slithered out, like lava laden with debris – the dusty stage at the youth theatre, a box with letters and a glass in it, and three shimmering candles.

The past gains clarification and the present moves towards the re-staging of the iconic musical creating an atmosphere of eerie suspense and renewed interest in the unsolved murder of the lead actress.

‘How did we forget?
‘Don’t people bury traumatic memories?’
‘Maybe,’ muses Ginger. ‘But it’s more like…I don’t know. It’s like the synopsis of a play. We just can’t see the actual script.’
‘I agree. I can see bits clearly…other stuff, not so much.’

The setting in the theatre is realistically evoked, as if we are there; as the lights go down and the crackle of a voice comes through the radio earpiece with it’s threatening tone, a shiver runs down my spine and I imagine her in the dark looking around for the source of the menace.

At times the suspense is dragged out and the scenes with the teens end prematurely making the reader wait for them to meet again, but by the time to musical is close to opening for the second time, the pace has picked up and I’m no closer to suspecting the truth behind the mystery element of the novel, my one suspicion turning out to be hopelessly wrong and the finale comes as a shock.

And then the most beautiful, reverent ending that evoked all kinds of emotion in me and had tears rolling my cheeks. I look back at the dates that the book was being written and remember what was happening in our own lives at that time and recognise how much more I understand about life after death than I did before August 2019.

‘That’s what I found the hardest,’ admits Morgan, still golden gorgeous in the glow of the mirror lights. ‘Never getting to say goodbye to anyone properly. But there are ways you can. Love lingers. It’s still there, even if you’re not.’

I can’t say whether this book is for you, but I want to say a huge thank you to Louise Beech for her gesture, and for following her own heart and passion, for she too, like the protagonist, is a lover of theatre, an usher and a girl with a few screenplays in her top drawer that I hope one day, like Chloe’s, will make it onto the stage.

Written from the heart, it brings the stage alive, igniting the imagination of those with a passion for theatre, whether from the front mezzanine seats or in the spotlight. It would make an excellent theatre piece.

Lest We Forget

“I’m still here; I am dust.

I’m those fragments in the air,

the gold light dancing there,

that breeze from nowhere.”

Dust – the musical

Further Reading

My review of How To Be Brave

My review of Louise Beech’s The Mountain in My Shoe

My review of Louise Beech’s Maria in the Moon

Buy a Copy of I Am Dust via Book Depository