Repression in Work For Four Hands.

I’m no expert, but I have dipped into Jung and the Jungians and learned a little of what they have to say about the corrosive effects of repression. A life can be driven off course when true memories are battened down in the unconscious mind as if under a trapdoor, and false memories are heaped up to stop the trapdoor from bursting open. But events can sometimes stir those buried memories into life. It’s not comfortable when you start to hear the sound of knocking, maybe muffled at first, but growing steadily louder and louder. Something important is going on, though, and a lot is at stake. Maybe your life. And maybe the lives of others.

  
         
                       
 

Alison Buxton is beginning to be plagued by flashbacks. The book is sprinkled with these tiny scenes from the past which keep breaking into her consciousness in spite of all her efforts to stop them. The first chapter opens with one:

  
                       
     
...A boy. Very tall, almost a man. A boy standing by a window, sunlight gilding his shoulder and thigh. Blood streaming down his cheek. A girl crouched on a bed, blood on her nails, blood on the counterpane held to just-hatched breasts, gasps pulling her chest apart. The door opening. A woman coming in. Looking at the girl, looking at the boy. Colour leaching from her face. The girl crying, weeping, wailing. The world ending...