Tim and Anthony are very different people, leading very different lives, following different careers in different cities. Tim is a conformist: office job, moderately successful, and teetering on the brink of a premature midlife crisis. Anthony is a rebellious non-conformist: a writer who sneers at the hum-drum and derides ‘corporate sell-outs.’ But are they really so very different?
Tim is tortured by the tedium of his job and struggling with his work / life balance. The combined pressures of his circumstances and his mindset are contriving to push him close to losing the plot. The fact that he keeps finding himself in strange places and situations, with no recollection of how he got there only exacerbates his fear that he’s going mental.
Anthony has a book to write, and a deadline. He has plenty of ideas, but is having difficulty expressing them. As time begins to run short, he hits the bottle and embarks on a frenzy of revision, through which author and narrative become difficult to separate from one another.
The two narratives of From Destinations Set trace these characters’ activities as they occur in parallel – not only in terms of time, but also literally, with the page divided into two columns with one story in the left, the other in the right. As events and personalities unravel in each of the two separate stories, the similarities, rather than the differences, become apparent. But more than this, as the two plots develop, questions are raised as to precisely who’s writing the script: is Tim’s dislocation symptomatic of his breakdown, or is there some connection between him and Anthony?