PATRICK DEKELTER
AUSTRALIAN SUMMER
THE VOICE WITHIN THE RAIN
ABOUT
An invisible nostalgia. The protagonist is haunted by a vague and distant memory, of which he cannot reach the origin. All he can remember is an image, in some way related to his first car.
One day, he accidentally comes across what appears to have been exactly his first car, seemingly abandoned in the front yard of a house. He is interested not only because it is closely related to his indefinite memory, but also because, after selling it seventeen years ago, he had forgotten something very important in the glove compartment.
He contacts the current owner and manages to get into the car. He does not find what he was looking for, but only some sheets of paper, which turn out to be a manuscript by an unknown author. He looks at it absentmindedly and is about to put it away when the title intrigues him.
He takes it with him and begins to read, but at one point, he notices something strange: it is as if it describes his memory. Until then, he considers it just a coincidence, but as he continues reading, it seems to him at times as though he is the protagonist. Although he has never experienced the situations described, there are some similarities that link him to his reality.
In some glimpses, it seems to him that the protagonist is trying to communicate with him through the manuscript. He wonders until the end who the mysterious author might be, when suddenly a clue in the manuscript reconnects him to a particular moment in his past, that may hold the key to understanding not only the manuscript but also some of the decisions in his life that have led him to the present.
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Author: Patrick DeKelter
Novella
Word count: 12.759
Reading time: ca. 67 min.
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