Book Review: Do You Realize? A Story of Love and Grief and the Colours of Existence

Members of the Society who heard Marion Steel's lecture at the 2009 Annual Conference, or read her article in the July, 2010 issue of Existential Analysis (21.2), will already be aware of the power, depth and insight of her writing. Do You Realize? both confirms and extends Ms Steel's ability to move, surprise and challenge her readers.

Do You Realize? begins with a psychotherapist, M, recalling the death of one of her hospital clients, Mina. The reverie of their time together provokes M to detail her account of a romantic encounter in her life which, through Mina's death, she can now begin to explore and consider. This revealing investigation of a lost relationship makes up a substantial part of Do You Realize? and is written in various styles - short epigrammatic challenging and disturbing statements reminiscent of Nietzsche, snatches of remembered conversations and discussions, and (at times lengthy) poems. Interspersed with these are various philosophically-imbued explorations focused on questions and concerns surrounding relatedness. In another author's hands, this reliance upon multiple foci could have easily irritated and confounded the reader. That this is not the case, and that everything flows beautifully (though, personally, I thought that some of the poems' power was blunted by their unedited length), is indicative of Ms Steel's skills and qualities as a writer.

Throughout the text, readers are also provided with accounts of M's work as a hospital-based psychotherapist. Interestingly, much of what is recounted of M's encounters with clients focuses on dreams - the clients' and M's own dreams. Although little is stated explicitly about a way of working with dreams from an existential perspective, what is conveyed and recounted seem to me to capture with precision an attitude of respectful 'staying with' the dream world experience. Equally, the book recounts M's own personal struggles with disconnectedness and death. I found this section of the text to be particularly moving and searingly truthful. The writings of two writers in particular influence both the content and overall feel of the book. Heidegger's works - especially the later metaphysical papers that explore the 'no-thing' within Being - permeate the book as a whole. But, perhaps even more significant, is the input provided by the author's use of various key ideas and themes presented by the French poet, novelist, and social critic, Georges Bataille. Bataille is probably best known for his highly original (and, for many, highly disturbing) writings on eroticism which he saw as the pivotal means of 'assenting to life up to the point of death'. It is in the spirit of this Bataillian sense of the erotic that Do You Realize? can be described as paean to eros.

About a quarter of the way through Do You Realize?, the author writes:

In his book, Inner Experience, the philosopher Georges Bataille wrote: "We are no thing, neither you nor I, beside burning words which could pass from me to you, imprinted on a page: for I would only have lived to write them, and, if it is true that they are addressed to you, you will live from having had the strength to hear them."

As I fell upon this passage again while preparing this review I thought how apt they seemed in capturing something of my engagement with Do You Realize? and, through it, with its characters and its author.

There are (many) more details regarding the content and direction of the text that I could convey. But it seems to me that to do so would take something both important and pleasurable away from its readers. I'm loathe to do this. So, instead, I will offer one final comment. On the front and back cover of Do You Realize? there is a short blurb by the Booker Prize winning novelist, Hilary Mantel. She writes: 'A thought-provoking book: the fascination of its themes, and the delicacy of their handling, will stay with me for a long time.'

I agree. And I have the feeling that you will, too.

Ernesto Spinelli