Squaring Circles?

‘Why Call A Novel "Squaring Circles"? I have been asked.

My reply is this.

There two strata to the novel. One comprises the story and the other cognitive behavioural messages.

As to the story, the mystery and twists of the plot, I believe, justify the title.  The reader discovers certain pivotal and unresolved quandaries in the hero’s life, which predate the week’s events described in the novel. To a degree, some are solved in those seven days of the storyline and the path to others flagged up. But I have no wish to disclose the thrust of the story to explain the title!

However regarding the second strata surrounding cognitive behaviour, I have no such inhibition! The origin of our personality, our traits, our attitudes, our seemingly instinctive emotional reactions to certain stimuli continue to confound and yet fascinate psychologists, psychiatrists and behavioural scientists. They have me too! Is it ‘Nature’ or ‘Nurture’ which has forged them. Or is it a combination of both?

While I have studied the implications and counsel of many authors and relevant authorities for over 30 years, I cannot claim to be qualified or even expert. However I have witnessed both in myself and others I have tried to help, the intense power and intricacy of emotional patterning. I have seen too the degree of careful commitment it can take to moderate a deep-seated behavioural pattern, let alone break it.

There are, of course, those who say that we are born as we are and it is a fruitless mission to seek to change it.

I don’t believe that. However I do know that to change and harness our emotional processes can seem to some no less challenging than it is for a mathematician to square a circle. The story explores this concept. Hence the title!

Gerry Neale
www.squaringcircles.co.uk
http://www.amazon.co.uk