The Habit of Seeing: Book One
A new book about attention, observation, and learning how to notice: Available to order here.
The Inclination
Tom McPherson
A novel of rehearsal, scrutiny, and the subtle pressure of permission.
Set in West Berlin in the early nineteen seventies, The Inclination follows a small group of artists preparing a play in a borrowed flat. Arnold directs. Michael observes. Nancy manages what cannot be named. Olivia performs. The work is provisional and carefully contained.
As attention enters, nothing is explicitly forbidden. Instead, behaviour shifts. Language tightens. Decisions narrow. Efficiency replaces curiosity. Control begins to resemble care. The conditions for continuation erode without confrontation.
Told through quiet observation rather than spectacle, the novel traces a movement from rehearsal to exposure, from collapse to dispersal, and finally to departure. It is a study of pressure rather than conflict, of how creative work thins not under censorship but under scrutiny, and of how endings arrive without drama.
Spare and precise in tone, The Inclination is a novel of rooms, gestures, silence, and proportion, about what happens when permission itself becomes the pressure.
Themes
The Inclination explores artistic discipline, group dynamics, scrutiny, and the quiet erosion of creative freedom. It is concerned with atmosphere rather than spectacle, and with the subtle pressure that emerges when attention replaces permission.
Excerpt
Arnold’s voice reached me before the room did.
It was not raised. It did not search for attention. It moved steadily, cutting through other sounds with practised ease, as though it had been speaking for some time and had no intention of stopping simply because someone new had arrived. The words were not immediately clear, but the rhythm was. It was the rhythm of assertion rather than argument.
“You’re assuming a finish,” he said. “That’s where everyone goes wrong.”
The door closed behind me with a soft, padded finality. The sound was absorbed instantly, swallowed by the thickness of the air. Smoke hung low and uneven, suspended rather than drifting, as if the room had decided to keep it.
The smell came in layers. First wine, red, opened too early and used too quickly. Then the drier scent of old paper. Coffee followed, reheated and left standing. Underneath it all was damp wool and something mineral, the faint reminder of stone that never fully warmed.
I stood still, letting my eyes adjust. Heat pressed gently against my face. The windows were closed. Outside noise arrived muted and indistinct, reduced to a dull, continuous presence. Inside, everything felt closer together than it should have been.
Arnold leaned forward over the table, both hands flat on its scarred surface. His jacket had been pushed back, his sleeves rolled without care. The posture gave him a compressed intensity, like energy held deliberately in check.
He spoke again, faster now, building on a thought that had clearly begun before I entered.
Release Date: 18th March 2026
Publisher: Circle Line Press
Format: Paperback and eBook
Available from
Amazon UK (Soon)
Amazon US (Soon)
Waterstones
Other novels by Tom McPherson
The Alignment
The Gestural Line