How To Forget

Being able to remember more is not necessarily an improvement. Just think of all the horrible memories that you can’t get rid of? Improving our capacity to remember is so often prioritised over the importance of forgetting, I think we ignore how often we attempt to forget. We don’t even know how we do it but we do it every night when we fall asleep. Perhaps just the act of consciousness is overwhelming. Certainly if we have a behaviour or habit or phobia we don’t want, it’s usually some sort of memory that’s causing it. Why do we get so much pleasure from focusing on books or movies or TV or drugs or even mindless sex? They all provide the brain with ways to briefly ignore other troubles. We are almost constantly seeking ways to forget.

Better than that, if you get into the story I guarantee it will make you forget, even the massive mortgage or the idiot who makes your job such hell, it will do what we want every novel to do, take you somewhere else, not be you for a little while. The only difference is, this book tells you it’s going to do it and still does; like a magician who tells you he’s going to fool you and, though you’re completely prepared, he still does.

In this second novel, as in his debut Making Love (2003), Marius Brill again spins a compelling story using his unique style of, ‘fictual’ writing; weaving gripping satirical fiction with deeply-researched documentary fact to create powerful arguments to make us think again about what we believe we know.
Marius spent over eight years researching and writing How To Forget using methods honed during his twenty years as a journalist; less by poring over books and more by embedding himself in the worlds he was writing about. For How To Forget, a novel about how our memories shape our identity and how magic and confidence tricks play on the way we see ourselves and what we believe, Marius went in deep.
Marius trained intensively for over two years at the London College of Clinical Hypnosis to become a certified Clinical Hypnotherapist before helping to start the Change In Mind Organisation (www.changeinmind.org). At this thriving hypnotherapy practice in the heart of Chelsea he still treats a wide range of well-heeled clientele for an array of problems, phobias and habits, from weight loss to skin conditions – gathering experience and stories about our minds and what tricks they can play.
Peter, How To Forget’s central character, is a magician and much of the book takes place in the sphere of magic, mentalism and confidence tricks; the world of Derren Brown and The Real Hustle. Marius performed his first magic show ten years ago because he was ashamed he couldn’t afford to hire an entertainer for his four year old son’s birthday party. Soon he began to be hired by other parents to perform at their children’s parties too. In researching How To Forget, Marius trained for, and through dedicated practice, developed expert magic skills performing for adults at corporate events and even in restaurants.
The character Kate, is a confidence woman who yearns to go straight. To gather the lowdown on confidence tricks and the life of grifters, Marius persuaded a three card monte ‘crew’ to allow him to shadow them. He discovered how the con man’s way of life with such high levels of distrust result in a paranoia and constant nervousness amongst gang members. They are more wary than most that what we see is often an illusion, they paradoxically appeared to follow a far deeper code of ‘honour among thieves’ than others.
Marius spent many years charting the latest challenges and breakthroughs in neuroscientific memory studies. He specialises in exploring tricks of the mind – illusions and delusions-, mental problems and memory issues such as dementia, Alzheimer’s, and even methods of improving memory as well as, of course, forgetfulness.