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I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist. I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.
In a recent post, I explored how the experience of terror and trauma can have lasting repercussions for the individual concerned. I’m also interested, both as a reader and writer, in how the impact can reverberate across the generations. Would a parent’s exposure to unspeakable horrors make them overprotective towards their own children? Would the struggle for survival render them so emotionally blunted they’re unable to give the children the love they need? Would their pleasure in the easier life they’ve created for their children be marred by envy?
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Stephen is in trouble, suspended from work after a violent outburst that’s left him shaken and his wife concerned for their shared future. She wants him to talk about his childhood; he is terrified of resurrecting the ghosts of the past. Yet when he gets a phone call telling him his mother is unwell, he decides it’s time to pay her a visit in the town where the events of a single day shattered so many lives. You know you’re in safe hands with a writer who uses the word crescendo¹ correctly on the first page, and comes with an endorsement from Alison Moore. That Dark Remembered Day bubbles with elegant descriptions from the Cornish coast to the windswept Falklands as the past is uncovered layer by layer until the full horror of that day’s events are finally revealed. 9 fictional psychologists and psychological therapists: 3. The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna1/10/2013 Adrian Lockhart is a British clinical psychologist who has fled his failing marriage to work in a psychiatric hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone, shortly after the civil war. Adrian is no knight in shining armour; even he wonders what he can offer a country where the entire population has been brutalised, and his efforts are impeded by structures he can't possibly understand. Yet this reflective outsider is an ideal literary vehicle to explore what remains of humanity in the aftermath of war. While Adrian's ineffectiveness is no great advert for clinical psychology, I find him one of the most convincing fictional psychological therapists I've encountered so far. This might be down to the author's expertise in creating plausible characters, as well as her good sense in seeking professional advice, as noted in the acknowledgements. (As I mentioned in the introduction to this series of posts, psychologists and psychological therapists are appealing to writers, but can be hard to get right.) Although I've never worked abroad, or with those blunted by war, some of Adrian's experiences reminded me of the challenges of working as a psychologist in longstay psychiatric institutions in Britain, with the sense of overwhelming need and not yet having the right tools or structures to meet them. Perhaps the best he can do is listen to the stories of those able to tell them, and bear witness to the tragedy around him.
In that context, the ending didn't work so well for me, when he offers his friend, local surgeon Kai Mansaray, a potential remedy for the trauma that prevents him sleeping. It might be a case of letting the psychology dominate the story rather than support it: while the treatment, EMDR, is a recommended intervention for post-traumatic stress disorder, and one that a suitably trained psychologist might practice, the somewhat mechanical method seems quite a shift in tone from Adrian's previous approaches. However, those with a more immediate experience of trauma work may disagree with this reading and, either way, it's a small point in a psychologically astute and deeply moving novel. More war trauma with the next in the series, I'm afraid, when I review Pat Barker's take on the treatment of shellshocked soldiers in the First World War in her 1991 novel, Regeneration. But I'll be posting on some jollier topics before then, starting with my reading pile in four or five days time. If you can't wait that long for something on the lighter side, check out this style blog for a very different take on the spirit of the people of Freetown, Sierra Leone. |
entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice
Annecdotal is where real life brushes up against the fictional.
Annecdotist is the blogging persona of Anne Goodwin:
reader, writer, slug-slayer, tramper of moors, recovering psychologist, struggling soprano, author of three fiction books. LATEST POSTS HERE
I don't post to a schedule, but average around ten reviews a month (see here for an alphabetical list), some linked to a weekly flash fiction, plus posts on my WIPs and published books. Your comments are welcome any time any where. Get new posts direct to your inbox ...
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