conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Florida, Planning, State with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Good Doctor'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.. Start with the sentence 'The Good Doctor
  It was evening when my father got back from the club'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Good Doctor
  It was evening when my father got back from the club. He said he'd played badly. He'd had a few drinks and seemed irritable, but he didn't look sick to me. His voice was still loud and sure of itself, expressing opinions like truths, making jokes, and it was only when we came to dessert that he remembered I wasn't there on holiday.
  So we all went through to the inner chamber again. Valerie and I sat down in the same armchairs, my father settled himself behind the desk. He was pretending to be happy, but I could see that our conversation at the table had upset him. He was moving things around on the top of the desk, looking around the room, till finally his peevishness fixed on a point, and stayed there.
  We sat in silence until one of the maids, an elderly woman, barefoot and aproned, came in with a tray. While she poured, Valerie spoke sideways to her: 'Betty, the flowers...'
  And the old lady in the nice blue uniform set the dying flowers down and got on to her knees. She started crawling across the floor, picking up bits of flowers as she went.
  I came back in darkness, late at night. All the lights were out, except for at the front entrance and in the duty room. Framed by the window, I could see Laurence sitting at the desk inside, very upright and alert, his hands clasped in front of him. Wearing his white coat.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me another paragraph.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: At the next staff meeting I tried to bring it up. What was the plan, I wanted to know, with Tehogo? Was he going to be replaced? Would we have to struggle on without assistance?
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: This might be just because, after seven years of waiting, I have shifted about twenty metres away, into Dr Ngema's room. A small event, but it means a lot to me. A new room, bare and clean and empty: a good place to start again. I spread my things around and bought a few cloths and pictures to hang up. Anything to stamp myself on to the blankness. And now my life has taken root again. I know I won't be stuck here for ever; other places, other people, will follow on.
  A whole new sense of the future, because of one tiny change. Which makes me wonder if all of this might have happened differently if I'd never had to share my room.
  The homelands of South Africa were impoverished and underdeveloped areas of land set aside by the apartheid government for the 'self-determination' of its various black 'nations'.
  I am grateful to the National Arts Council of South Africa for supporting me as writer-in-residence at the University of Cape Town during the latter half of 1998.
  Many thanks are also due to my agent Tony Peake for his honest eye and unwavering support; to Lyn Denny for helping me with a few stray facts; to Alison Lowry and Clara Farmer for their editorial input; and to Riyaz Ahmad Mir for keeping me company.