It’s rare for an author to tell readers to ignore parts of a book if they wanted, but that is what Dr Charleston Thomas is advising for his first book, the novel titled A Biography of Memory.

Thomas, 47, is a student of language and literature, and is intrigued by the writing style of interior monologue in which the writer takes readers into the mind of the protagonist.

“I am somebody who lives in my head a lot. I’m the type of person who you’ll find by the river alone, meditating. The darkness of the night is my best friend. In fact, there is a poem in there called Night My Friend.”

Most of the novel takes place in the mind of an unnamed narrator. He is re-reading his PhD thesis, trying to decide whether or not to have it published in an academic journal.

The reading is continually interrupted by memories of his happy childhood growing up on an island, surrounded by an artistic family, as well as the pain and anger he feels about moving away from his family and attending university.

He thinks about the negative things he saw happening to others in his early years, especially about the “damage that has been done to the male gender” and the contributing factors.

He is also distracted by nature as he goes to different locations to read, and the distractions and thoughts make reading the thesis very laborious for him.

The reader is, therefore, reading the thesis with the character as well as experiencing his memories and emotions.

“He always had a knack for ideas but he was bitterly disappointed and disenchanted by the lies of the academic system, the way in which the university system mimics the colonial system, the way in which it removes you from yourself and, most importantly to the narrator, the way in which he is removed from the thing he feels he is on earth to do, which is to make music and to be in the arts.”

He eventually recalls that, years ago, he had begun writing some poetry. He reads them to soothe himself. And when he finishes the poems, he starts to recall music from local artists he admired. It inspires him and he hears new songs in his mind, music he always wanted to create.

[caption id="attachment_1125544" align="alignnone" width="885"] Dr Charleston Thomas playing the piano. - Photo courtesy Dr Charleston Thomas. [/caption]

Thomas said it is through the arts, where the rules of grammar can be broken, that the character figures out some of the problems he could not previously.

In the poem Institution, he works through the challenge of institutions – what they do, what they look and feel like – and better describe them. In another called The Anatomy of Pain, he describes pain as part of himself and works through his struggles and bitterness.

“Because he was born into music, the songs worked out the emotional content and layers that the grammatical language couldn’t do and that the words of the poems couldn’t do. The music, therefore, takes us into the realm of verbal gestures.”

Verbal gestures, he explained, were the sounds made in Negro Spirituals and that the people o