In the novel More Bread Or I’ll Appear an Irish family is afflicted with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a genetic disease that causes them considerable discomfort in their individual lives. The eldest sister Aisling has gone missing and her siblings hunt for her around the globe; getting entangled in her extrodinary complicated life and mythical persona. In this excerpt, Patrick is living in New York and pays a visit to Aisling’s T’ai Chi instructor in the hope of gaining some information as to her whereabouts.

Excerpts from chapter 9 of the novel
"More Bread Or I’ll Appear"
THE DOUBTING DISEASE

 The bacterial wind had blown and snapped his mouth shut. In swirls of silence shapes mounted each other and festered. Never quite free of doubt. Increasingly, he was paralyzed by repeated action and thoughts that were incessantly renewed without direction. Perhaps he was blind but he saw the past duplicated until the future had to be discarded.
Patrick worried that he had swallowed the fog after the scream at the canyon had created a void in his belly. This fog was now an unfurling contaminated weight and he couldn't be sure, but maybe he could dispel it by tapping on his teeth, seven times a tooth with each finger nail. Should the thumb be involved? Were his hands clean enough? He couldn't be sure, but just in case, once more, once is never enough.

* * *

"Grasp the Sparrow's tail." Morningdew's arms swam in the air, his students tracing his moves in Riverside Park, Manhattan. Patrick waited until he was making corrections and approached the man gingerly.
"Excuse me," Patrick hesitated. "I need to ask you a question."
Morningdew smiled. "Sure, just wait a few minutes."
Patrick sat on the grass and observed the lesson. Morningdew, a slim, gray-haired man in his mid forties, was telling his students to go check out the Museum of Natural History.
"I want you to look at the video of the lemur. The Sifaka in particular is the best dancer in the animal kingdom. You can learn T'ai Chi from the lemur." He began hopping sideways in giant, loping diagonal steps, his arms widely cupping the air. The students looked on in astonishment as he bounded past them and came jogging back. "Of course I don't have a tail and the dance is all in the tail." He wiped the sweat from his forehead and told them to do pushing hands. As they paired themselves off he came over to Patrick.
"Did you know my sister Aisling?" Patrick clutched a worn out flyer.
"Aisling?" The teacher said. "Of course! She was wonderful. I told her she could be a master herself if she'd iron out a thing or two. We only had her for a few weeks though. How is she?"
"That's the problem. I have an urgent message to give her. Our mother's sick and I don't know where she is."
"Hmm! I can't help you there. She was like an angel, she came and graced us and left without a word."
Patrick turned in despair to the river.
"But you know who might know?" Morningdew mused. "A Nigerian guy, Abraham. She brought him along with her when I was appearing as John F. Kennedy's ghost in the Village."
Patrick looked baffled.
"My friends were playing in a band and I did a guest appearance to educate the public about what really happened in Dallas. Abraham... now let me see. He sells watches on the corner of Fifth and fifty-seventh." Morningdew pointed down to Patrick's feet. "You shouldn't stand or walk with your feet pointing outwards. Point them in the direction you are going, it's logical, otherwise you're heading toward gravitational collapse. And put 70% of the weight on the ball of your foot. Nijinsky, Michael Jordan, Mick Jagger, they all tip-toe. Ever notice that?"
Patrick turned his feet inward. Morningdew made slight alterations with his own foot, his hand firmly on Patrick's shoulder.
"Thanks." Patrick stared dubiously at his new feet. "What did happen to JFK? The Mob?"
"The KKK. That's not even JFK buried beside Jackie in Arlington it's Tippet, a cop."
"What happened to his body then?"
"He was dismembered by Scottish Celtic druids and thrown in a lake in Texas."
"Wow!"
"Stay for the lesson, if you want."
"No, I have to work. Maybe some other time."
Morningdew grinned and walked back to his class. Patrick suddenly turned and ran back to him.
"Where should I put my tongue?"
"The tongue should go on the roof of the mouth," Morningdew told him gravely and with authority. "The tip almost touching the back of the top teeth."
"That's brilliant," Patrick enthused. "I'll definitely try it." As he walked away again the teacher spoke to his students who had gathered in rows behind him. "Embrace the tiger, return to mountain." The group stepped and turned, hands reaching out in perfect synchronicity.
With his tongue flattened against the roof of his mouth Partick walked past the Plaza Hotel enjoying the smell of horse shit from the tourist carriages. There were many Africans selling scarves, bags and watches all with fake designer labels. However if the T'ai Chi teacher was exactly right there was Abraham standing outside the Warner Brother's building with a briefcase full of watches. He was deeply black, wearing a brown leather jacket and a white shirt and tie, stocky and of average height with a triangular nose and chubby fingers that held the case open for the passers-by. Abraham was strangely dwarfed by a giant Bugs Bunny statue, glamorous in a tuxedo, holding out a victory carrot.
"Abraham?" Patrick said, more to Bugs Bunny over his shoulder.
Abraham was immediately suspicious.
"I'm Aisling's brother Patrick." Patrick's gaze moved from the fright of the Bunny.
Abraham's shoulders relaxed and he grinned, revealing big blocks of widely spaced white teeth like tombstones planted on a pink gummy ridge.