n.Why unfinished things occupy the mind more than finished ones.
Bluma Zeigarnik, 1927Established psychological concept
The original finding has held up unevenly in replication; treat it as a useful description rather than a law.
Chapter Nineteen
There are one hundred and forty books on the shelf in the spare room and Oyin has finished eleven of them.
The other one hundred and twenty-nine are not abandoned. That is the distinction she makes and her husband thinks is a fiction. Abandoned would mean she has stopped thinking about them.
She thinks about them constantly.
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The Hungarian novel: page 211, a woman about to open a letter. Since 2019.
The one about the Antarctic expedition: page 156, four men in a tent, one of them ill. Since 2021.