Wed 11 Sept
6:30-9pm
Celebrate the launch of Marieke Bigg’s new novel, A Scarab Where The Heart Should Be, by joining her for a conversation with Orla Owen (Christ on a Bike).
A Scarab Where The Heart Should Be follows Jacky ‘The Beetle’ McKenzie, an obsessive architect whose refusal to compromise threatens to tear her carefully managed life apart. Opening with Jacky at the peak of her career, her personal and professional lives subsequently begin to fall apart as she struggles with other people’s inability to understand her dedication to a unique vision. The novel explores themes such as polyamory, cancel culture and mental health with a cold, detached eye comparable to Jacky’s own uncompromising architectural style.
Marieke Bigg is the author of Waiting for Ted, and This Won’t Hurt. Writing across fiction and non-fiction, she deconstructs the cultural givens around bodies, minds, and identity. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, where she studied the technological transformation of human reproduction.
Christ on a Bike follows Cerys, who receives an unexpected inheritance but there are rules attached. Three simple rules that must be followed.
As she settles into her new life, she begins to feel trapped: the past is ever-present. She convinces herself that the villagers are watching her and, desperate to control her own future, she tries to break free.
Orla Owen was born in Belfast, and raised in Ireland and the UK. Before she became a writer, she was an actress and drama practitioner, studying Theatre at Bretton Hall College of the Arts.
Her latest book, Christ On A Bike, published by the award winning Bluemoose Books, has been described as ‘strikingly original and utterly brilliant’. It was picked as a recommended read by Nina Pottell from Prima Magazine, who reviewed it as ‘Black Mirror meets Tales of The Unexpected with shades of Shirley Jackson’ and was recommended as a read for January by Martin Chilton, The Independent’s Chief Book Critic.