Spoiler Alert!

I read my first Goodreads review today for The Sum of Parts. It was written by the usual suspect Mr. Soze (I'm guessing a nom de plume here). All in all I was extremely pleased with the enthusiasm and support for my book - 'deeply moving', 'thought-provoking', 'beautifully written', 'emotionally resonant', 'heart-wrenching and uplifting', 'sensitively portrayed', 'a must-read' to mention a few lovely soundbites.

But.

(There's always a 'but' isn't there?)
Mr. Soze said something that stopped me in my tracks. He - I shall assume the pronoun - said that the protagonist in The Sum of all Parts is facing several challenges, including Alzheimer's disease:

'She grapples with memory loss, confusion, and frustration as she struggles to hold onto her identity and memories. Her experiences shed light on the difficulties faced by people with Alzheimer's disease.'

My protagonist is suffering from Alzheimer's Disease? This is news to me. Where did Soze get this idea from? I was - am - perplexed and concerned. If one reader can misinterpret my book, will others? What does this say about my ability to write? Where did I go wrong?

Yes, my protagonist has issues with her memory - she is forgetting certain things and is desperate to hold on to cherished memories - but this is a symptom of her depression and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD). She is seeing therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, and she is receiving Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). In Part XV, Counsel, she is officially placed under the care of the mental health unit and is told she must take pregabalin - used for anxiety among other things. How was Alzheimer's got from that? I can only conclude that it was the passages about old age ('I am not what I was . I look at myself and see a virtual stranger') and the opening Thoughts:

'My childhood. My youth. My land of lost content. A place to which I can never return. But in my thoughts, I find that, yes, I can. There, in the safety and sanctuary of my mind, I relive every past moment, I explore my father's garden, I visit every room of my childhood, and search every corner. I don't want to forget.'

Not much to go on, but enough I suppose, and definitely enough to make me worry.

But.

(There it is again, that dreaded 'but'.)

I thought some more about The Sum of all Parts, how I chose to write it to a certain extent like a puzzle for the reader to decipher; how I deliberately set out to confuse in an attempt to show the reader that there is no truth only perception - or as Edward de Bono said 'perception is real even when it is not reality.' So let us focus on those two words decipher (to make out meaning, decode) and perception (obtaining knowledge through the senses). Soze deciphered The Sum of all Parts and his perception is that the protagonist has Alzheimer's Disease. Who am i to deny him his view, his thoughts, his perceived reality of the world I created within the pages of my book? I did not write my protagonist as being an Alzheimer's sufferer, on the contrary she has depression and PTSD and is perhaps on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But as the inimitable Margaret Atwood said in her book Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing (Anchor Books, 2002):
'The writer communicates with the page. The reader also communicates with the page. The writer and the reader communicate only through the page.'
So you could say that writing a book is a bit like the game Chinese Whispers: the writer's words reach each reader slightly differently, which obviously leaves ample room for confusion, miscommunication but when viewed positively it leaves room for perception and for the reader to interpret the written word however they choose.

I left my marks on paper, let the reader decode them as they will, and if something gets lost in translation, so be it.

'The reader is - among other things - a sort of spy. A spy, a trespasser, someone in the habit of reading other people's letters and diaries...the reader does not hear, he overhears.'

(Margaret Atwood, Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing)

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