I knew, logically, that you were bad for me, that you demoralised me,
destroyed my peace of mind, deflected me from the things I should have
been doing, distorted my sense of perspective; yet at the same time you
keyed me up, made me feel alive.'
Roger Piper is married, middle-aged and middle-rung; he is a man who
has elevated failure to an art form. His wife thinks he is up all night writing
a novel. In fact, he's writing a suicide note, a long farewell letter to Angela
Caxton, the girl with the marmalade-coloured hair, with whom he has shared
a wild but hopeless affair. OUR SONG traces their entanglement from its carefree
beginnings to its inevitable yet unexpected tragic end. Pouring out his heart, the
former advertising executive - his career, as well as much else, sacrificed to the
consuming trauma of his obsessive relationship - looks back upon the astonishing
helter-skelter experience of falling unsuitably but violently in love.