Who Am I Today? by Peter Nasmyth: book review

Who Am I Today? (2010) is a compilation of short stories, connected through the selection of a psychological playing card. There are eight stories ranging from 2 pages to 49 pages – four in the third person and four in the first person; five with a male central character and three with a female central character. Each story is located in a different country, such as Georgia, Nepal, the Canaries, England, and America. Two or more could be obliquely autobiographical.

The psychological cards chosen in the eight stories, which frames their themes, include: ugly, adventurer, rich, vain, melancholy, confident, bold, and poet. The two best stories are Adventurer and Vain.

One character in each story plays the psychological card game and for the next 2 days to 2 weeks, that character makes decisions based on the influencing card. Each story shows what happens to a person who takes on a different personality from their own in order to break repetitive behaviour patterns.

The book contains a full set of 16 psychological cards. Each card is patterned on the reverse side, and on the obverse side is a black background with a male and a female head. Each card contains a word – 11 of them are adjectives (ugly, rich, vain, melancholy, confident, bold, generous, patient, honest, slow, and poor). Five of the cards contain a profession or character-type (adventurer, poet, abstainer, warrior, and scientist). The instructions are simple and flexible – and are provided in the last chapter of the book in Postscript.

This is a unique way of reading the well-crafted stories. Each story is full of suspense with twists and turns, until the moment of decision, and its unforgettable impact. Whether readers play the psychological card game for themselves or not, the stories alone are fascinating, and could well leave an indelible mark on the individual – depending on their current state of mind. The stories could be the impetus to change a personality trait or a character-type – temporarily or … not.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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