Psychological Depths
This is a psychological novel, and a good read, but it has an unusual twist. 'Floy', the protagonist of the novel is a women who on the surface has everything. She is beautiful, charismatic, and has risen from a humble background to make a successful career as a scientist. She has a wealthy husband who adores her, and two children. Beneath the surface she is frustrated, miserable, and has failed in all her human relationships. She tries to drown herself, is recovered in time to save her life, but not to prevent brain damage and resultant total amnesia.

The novel is the story of the recovery of her memory. Painful step by painful step she learns to recognise her pets, her husband and her son and daughter. The device of writing an imaginary diary enables her to recover the memories of her past. She grew up as child of a mining family on a council estate. As a bright girl she won scholarships and went to university. Her father resented and did not understand her, the mother loved but did not understand either, the brothers drifted away. She had a brilliant university career, but a deep and unhappy love affair, and ended by marrying the son of the big house where she had once been a part time maid. Her husband adored her, but her mother-in-law detested her: she had a son and a daughter but failed to feel strong maternal affection for them. All the time she is consumed by discontent and longing for the academic career she abandoned.

All this is seen in her imagination from a third person perspective. She sees her personality as it really is for the first time: brilliant, sensitive, and egotistical. Sensitive herself, she had been insensitive to others, and for the first time she understood the web of human relationships she has woven and tangled. So far this might be regarded as a standard psychological novel. Floy has recovered her personality, and is now free to live her life with some greater understanding. This is where most novels might end, but there is a further twist. One of her brothers had also risen out of his background to become 'a boring accountant'. However he had also discovered Zen Buddhism. Through him Floy learns that even the purified personality is something imperfect and impermanent. Having learnt who she is herself, Floy now realises that she must transcend her own personality to reach to something that into something that is beyond her own self. The books ends with Floy beginning to attain enlightened detached compassion.