‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’
— Carl Gustav Jung
When we leave childhood behind and step onto the world’s stage, it’s tempting to believe that we are masters of our fate and fully equipped to ‘bestride the narrow world like a colossus’.
Not so fast.
What are we to do about the lingering shadows hovering over our thoughts and pulling the strings of our behaviour? Family dysfunction, traumas, and grievances can stick to us like burrs, no matter how hard we try to shake them off. So, we rush to smother our inner demons, paper over the cracks, and attempt to bury our flaws and fears in the deepest recesses or the psyche. Only then (we hope!) will we awaken each day with purpose and a singing heart, fully in charge of our beliefs and decisions.
A psychologist or psychiatrist might tell you, however, that past wounds and repressed traumas are not so easy to escape. As a writer of fiction, I try to keep those caveats in mind as I get to know the darker side of my characters. As they move through the story in fits and starts, it is the ‘why’ rather than the ‘what’ of their behaviours I find particularly fascinating. And the desire for an answer has me rushing to my desk to capture their innermost fears and desires.
In contrast to the typical adventure story, where actions drive the plot, the psychological novel is more concerned with a character’s inner life as revealed in their thoughts, feelings, dreams, and fears. It is this rich inner existence that forms the beating heart of the story. In a psychological thriller or suspense novel, we are drawn into the disturbed thoughts of the central character as he or she attempts to navigate a potentially threatening world.
While it’s difficult to pin down the author of the very first psychological thriller, Wilkie Collins is surely near the top of the list. In his classic novel, The Woman in White, he explores mental illness, unreliable narrators, and the (subordinate) role of women in society. Edgar Allan Poe, an early master of the genre, wrote several tales of psychological suspense and horror. Who can forget the first line of The Tell-Tale Heart, with its atmosphere of paranoia and increasing mental deterioration, as it pulls the reader into the mind of the agitated narrator: True! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but will you say that I am mad?
Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, doesn’t offer much in the way of plot until more than half-way through the story when (spoiler alert!), Rebecca’s scuttled boat is found with her body inside, and with evidence of foul play. But the story is a page-turner, none-the-less, as the hypnotic voice of the apprehensive young narrator carries us along on a relentless tide of suspicion and dread. We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us.
Psychological suspense novels are typically populated with characters who rely on mind-games, manipulation, and gaslighting to carry out their games of deceit. In The Double, where nothing is as it appears to be, Vidor Kiraly struggles to maintain his composure as reality shifts under his feet, and Dr Gessen suspects he is not who he claims to be. Other characters in the novel seek ways to exploit the psychological vulnerabilities of others, as they cross over into the dark side of their psyche.
Although the storylines are different, both of my novels started with a particular character. I wrote The Shadow Bird to explore a persistent vision I had of a dark-haired woman sitting at the bedside of an injured young girl, hoping she’ll wake up. Much of the novel’s plot unspooled directly from my attempts to understand Erin’s fears and desires. What was she afraid of? What did she want? As the story progresses, Erin’s inner demons and traumatic past threaten to derail her comfortable life when she’s forced to evaluate a patient who killed his family.
The idea for The Double also began with a single image: an eminent scientist receiving a prize at an awards ceremony who attacks a stranger in the audience. As this image continued to appear in my head at odd times of the day, I tried to understand who he was and why he would attack a stranger. As I continued to ask questions, Vidor Kiraly was born, along with a desire to understand the ‘why’ rather than the ‘what’ of his behaviour. What hidden demons or desires might propel someone to act in shameful, dangerous, or delusional ways?
These questions helped propel me through 300 pages of The Double, in which two highly intelligent men, each with something to hide, are pitted against one another in a game of wills. Who would be the winner? Until I reached the final pages of the novel, the answer wasn’t clear, and even now I’m not sure who the victor was. Vidor Kiraly or Anton Gessen? (Hint: you’ll have to read the story to decide for yourself!)
And if character is truly destiny, then authors have an infinite range of possibilities to explore. What could be more compelling than to examine the many and mysterious facets of the human psyche?
[This article first appeared on www.booksbywomen.org on 10 March 2021]