Book Reviews

As well as having reviews of a range of books, each issue we hope to have a special feature. This issue the special feature is a review of two novels, The Words To Say It by Marie Cardinal and The Other Side Of You by Salley Vickers. In the relatively closed world of therapy and philosophy it is easy to forget that most people do not read therapy or philosophy books, nor do they think about their lives in the terms commonly represented in therapy and philosophy books. Rather than acknowledging this we tend to ignore it or to think about it as somehow less important or valid. This encourages us to split up life up into discrete sections, rather than adopting a more holistic perspective. Within the existential tradition it is even more difficult to understand because it has always used genres other than formal philosophy to represent its ideas - Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the 19thC and Sartre in the 20thC reached out to their audiences via the medium of literature rather than academic philosophy because they felt it was better suited to what they wished to communicate. It can be argued that if philosophy is about the way we live, then the novel is better suited to represent the issues we meet in life because it is more 'experience-near' than is formal abstract philosophy.