Trying

A deeply original exploration of the power of spontaneity—an ancient Chinese ideal that cognitive scientists are only now beginning to understand—and why it is so essential to our well-being

Are animals trying to tell us something—and have we been too distracted to notice?

This is a true story of a woman who experienced such a profound awakening that she could no longer live the same life, the same way, again. She could no longer ignore the woman who was screaming to be set free from the ties that bound her to a life she no longer desired or recognized.

Brigid Keenan was never destined to lead a normal life. From her early beginnings – a colourful childhood in India brought to an abrupt end by independence and partition, then a return to dreary post-war England and on to a finishing school in Paris with daughters of presidents and princes – ordinary didn't seem to be her fate. When, as a ten-year-old, she overheard her mother describe her as 'desperately plain', she decided then and there that she had to rely on something different: glamour, eccentricity, character, a career – anything, so as not to end up at the bottom of the pile. And in classic Brigid style, she somehow ended up with them all.