In The Intention Experiment: Use Your thoughts To Change Your Life and the World, author Lynne McTaggart takes the reader through years of numerous tests and experiments that explore the power of the untouchable part of life, nature and human beings. If you’re a mind science buff you will enjoy this book. It is surprising the number of respected scientists from a range of backgrounds and fields, who have compiled strong evidence that proves the existence of what some might call the miraculous. The Intention Experiment provides the foundation to ‘The Secret’ and all we have heard in recent years about the law of attraction. McTaggart, through her research and findings, demonstrates why these two ideas are more than just wishful thinking or the result of an active imagination. This book shows how anyone, with a mind to do so, can learn how to use their creative power of intention to produce changes in their life. The book claims that there is scientific proof that intention works. Our intention works with the minute building structures of life – the atoms, protons and such, to create, or message, and even to heal, in the past or the future. The Intention Experiment is not only informative, but inspiring and motivational in its mix of spirituality and science, consciousness and the scientific, providing proof of the power of the non-physical in a tangible way. The Intention Experiment is a mind opener that is so well written it is hard to put down. McTaggart makes the technical accessible and even humorous at times. What I like is that McTaggart maintains her scepticism, only allowing herself to accept a possibility when it has been scientifically proven numerous times. This element makes her explorations and findings highly credible. The book ends by offering the reader a step-by-step guide to try out the intention experience herself. About the reviewer Sandra Pollock loves fiction, fantasy and poetry, and is taking an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester.
Unburnable by Marie-Elena John was published in 2006, and named Best Debut Novel in that same year by Black Issues Book Review. The novel is about a woman haunted by an unclear and traumatic childhood, and an entrenched idea of an inherited evil. The novel tells the tale of three generations of African Caribbean women, and how their history and beliefs impact on their island community. Although a little confusing at the start, one of the strengths of this novel is the way John weaves back into the past, and forward into the present again. She takes the reader on a journey of discovery, fascinating and informative: walking through the lives and experiences of Matilda, Iris, and Lillian on the Caribbean island of Dominica. John creates characters the reader can relate to, even in their sad and unfortunate life struggles. There are delicious twists and turns with added humour and horror. This painful tale may seem shocking to a novice of African Caribbean culture, but very real to many who’ve lived deep within it. One of the darkly humorous aspects of the stories centres on the Catholic religion and a nun, Mary-Alice, who, in her Western ignorance and drive to save the blacks from themselves, fails to understand or even accept another way of life. This arrogance leads to the slaughter of a whole people - one of the novel's major horrors, along with the retribution served by Mrs Richards on a young Iris, starting another chain of events. As I read the novel, I felt for Lillian, her difficulty in trusting herself or allowing people into her life. I understood her outer success, but internal sense of loss and lack of connection with her roots. The characters felt human, as John shows their pain, confusion and misinterpretations throughout. I particularly like John’s ability to describe the voices and sounds from far beyond Lillian’s own age and times - back to the voices of her African ancestors, calling her back to find out the truth of who she is and what happened to her mother and grand-mother. Unburnable serves as an allegory of how the past controls the present and our future, and cannot be ignored, however hard we try. Another delight of this novel is how it delves into and portrays African and Dominican culture, history and beliefs. It demonstrates how much these have been trampled down, with the intention of being stamped out, but are still felt in every area of the society, and culture of the island. Unburnable has strong female characters with a matrilineal tribe, the foundations of which hark back to Africa.
Unburnable and the life of Lillian parallel in many ways the wider history of the African diaspora in the Caribbean and America, and the people's journey to find who they are, understand and connect to their own history, beliefs, spirit and spirituality, uncensored by Western ideologies. The more we fight a thing, the more it invades us - that would be my inscription for this novel. This is a rich, well-paced and vividly described novel. About the reviewer Sandra Pollock loves fiction, fantasy and poetry, and is taking an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester.
