From the author -
"It's quite visceral. I wanted to write about what it's like to be a woman, those milestones we are supposed to just accept and carry on regardless - our children leaving home, menopause, old age, infidelity - and how this all takes its toll on our mental health. Additionally we tend to view each other as 1D, we tend to focus on just one or two aspects of a person, we forget the bigger picture - I wanted to convey this in the story.
I also chose this approach to show how we and the protagonists in the story view life events differently depending on age, circumstances, emotions etc. We change constantly from moment to moment, our thoughts, ideals and beliefs affected by our emotions, our age, our situation. We as humans, in particular women, are continually boxed and categorized: we are daughter, wife, sister, lover, colleague, mother and so on; when in reality we are all this and so much more. We are made up of lots of different parts, each as important as the particular "whole" we are expected to present to society at any given time.
I also considered Gestalt psychology and Kurt Kofka (hence the title) when writing The Sum of all Parts: thoughts create feelings, feelings create behaviour, behaviour creates thoughts and so on. It's an endless cycle, one in which we are all caught, including the protagonists in my book."
