Carolyn Mathews asked Carolyn Mathews:

What does "square the circle" mean? Why did you use the expression as a title?

Carolyn Mathews One of the reasons I chose "Squaring Circles" was that the expression ‘to square the circle’ means ‘to find a way around a difficult problem’. Pandora encounters quite a few of these, the first at the very beginning, when her mother’s grave is disturbed. In an effort to find the culprit she turns detective, staying in Glastonbury, away from her family home. This is bad timing for her marriage, as her partner, Jay, is working closely with another problem – Gaby, a predatory singer who has designs on him. An extra complication arises when Pandora comes across Zac, an old flame, who offers her a tempting new job in a completely different sphere.

The title also relates to her social circles and how they could be healed or ‘squared’. Pandora’s present family circle includes Jay’s five children, three of them teenagers, unfamiliar to her until four years earlier. What’s more, a blood relative turns up whose identity has been kept a secret for over thirty years.

There are other circles, too: the Glastonbury community her mother was part of and the clients Pandora meets through the sound therapy work she does. And there is the Circle of Isis – a healing group her mother was involved with, which a scheming couple want to use for their own ends.

Finally, there’s a geometric connection. Rosemary, a character who also appears in the first book, describes herself as ‘a practical alchemist’ and practises her art within the Circle of Isis. A common symbol for alchemy is a circle within a square within a triangle, within a circle. If you look closely at the cover you can see all those shapes.

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