This reminded me of Steppenwolf--probably because the narrator has a bad trip in the end, not bad is the sense of unfortunate, but bad in the sense of unpleasant. But I haven't read Steppenwolf recently enough to say more than that. Unpleasantness is sometimes the only way to get past the way we've packaged things up so nicely. Indeed, the purpose of the packaging is, at least in part, to avoid. Orual's first book, her list of complaints, is such a packaging.

The second, the log of her bad trip, is the one in which she gives up (gradually) her egoic perception (as indeed, the struggle in any bad trip is about) and can see more. It is almost psychoanalytic at times in a way that play of C. S. Lewis meeting Freud, "Freud's Last Session", never gets close to. The events of her life play out the themes of her neurotic compromises with reality. The defense mechanisms outlined by Freud's daughter Anna turn out to work better as a novel's tropes than as clinical categories. Lewis doesn't force it to assume a Christian mold (as I'm always afraid he will) and keeps to the story which takes place in pre-Christian times. And the story's characters don't fall into the roles of advocating for philosophical positions (as I also always fear of Lewis's works.)

I'd like to wrap this review up in a neat package too, but like Orual's story, I'll just stop in the middle of