Mid 90s Lodge; a bit darker than the Small World/Changing Places/Nice Work trilogy. More technical narrative games; using different voices, parallel narratives, some laugh out loud humour (thankfully) and a wry acknowledgement of the trivial difficulties of affluent middle age, given a twist by a parallel spiritual dimension - pilgrimage and suburban sitcom; Los Angeles and (thankfully) Rummidge again.

This is the first book I have read by David Lodge and I loved it. Laurence (Tubby) Passmore is a middle aged television writer who is having a bit of a mid life crisis. He has everything but why is he still unhappy? He searches for answers in Kierkegaard to his angst and attends numerous alternative medicine therapies for the pain in his right knee.
That may not sound like the most interesting plot but believe me, you will enjoy this book. I laughed the whole way through and annoyed my family by reading out passages that were particularly clever. ( )

This is the second book by David Lodge that I've read, and I found it more overtly enjoyable than Thinks, largely because Laurence Passmore the narrator is a much more likeable character than Ralph Messenger. I also like Lodge's blatant self-awareness, which somehow manages not to come across as clumsy or gimicky - for example, the way he not only parallels Tubby with Soren Kierkegaard but has people constantly pointing it out, or the way he varies his style throughout and then has Tubby comment on the different styles he's used "because novels written entirely in the present tense don't work". Also, his quirky flashes of humour are brilliant - the section where Laurence as a young adolescent encounters the Catholic church because his girlfriend is a Catholic had me laughing out loud. ( )

Funny, full of classic British humor. Lodge uses a pretty inventive narrative structure for an otherwise
common story. ( )

Therapy is the story of Laurence Passmore's search for the land of lost content. He's a writer- he has everything he can ever want. Of course he's miserable- and sick, don't forget sick! Because this is David Lodge he speaks for both parties: wrtiters and the over-indulged. Not his best - that's Author, Author - but it's funny. Black and funny.