Those who know me also know that I have been obsessed with a set of events in my life which I am trying to fashion as a story for nearly twenty years. I have written many drafts, but do not feel satisfied. Recently, I decided to read books written on a similar concept, to see how those writers had tackled the subject.

I read The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima. It was a fantastic analysis on the mind of a neurotic. Its fundamental tenant being: I do not want the world to understand me. In one sentence Mishima upturns the entire argument of the human race. Not wanting to be understood can be so fundamentally different from anything I have known, we all want someone or the world at large to understand us.

I read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and that book does not belong to anything I have read until now. It is a book about the breakdown of a mind, and is structured as a breakdown. It is located in a space between the white and brown population in Jamaica and I have not known another book to be so edgy.  The whole story revolves around one change in point of view in the middle. The beginning and ending sections are the woman’s point of view; the middle is the man’s point of view, except for one intervention by the woman. That is how fragile a work of this nature can be, and how solid.

Any books you want to recommend to me?

Tags: Jean Rhys, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Wide Sargasso Sea, Yukio Mishima