Sigmund Freud attempts to treat a woman suffering from hallucinations that set explicit sexual acts in the foreground while mass death events are occurring in the background (drowning, fire, falling, buried alive). Getting into this novel is a bit of an uphill climb, since it's front-loaded with the hallucinations part but, on the far side of that, Sigmund goes to work as he tries to rationalize what's been shared, looking for the symbols he can tie into his patient's life and history.

There's a bit of a trick going on here, first hinted at and then increasingly evident (if you know your history, or you've just been reading the LT tags). The rising tension is mostly due to predicting what's coming rather than the plotting, although the hallucination element adds some ominousness. Its climax includes the most gut-wrenching description of this particular scene I've ever read, although I understand Thomas has Anatoly Kuznetsov to thank for its power. The final section ends on a mercifully happier note, the only one available. ( )

This is a tough book. Partly, it is the 'post-modern' style of the narrative, wherein actual events and non-fictional material is interlaced within the writing. Partly, it is the intense sexual fantasy in the (supposed) sessions between the main character and Freud that might put people off, and the knowledge we have of the doom awaiting those who lived between the wars of the 20th century. Or it might have been the iterative views of what is portrayed, each one changing the one before like a psychological Rashamon. How can we trust the narrator? How can we trust the portrayal of Freud, just reaching his ideas about the connection between love and the death wish?

And all along there is love, in various forms, and death, natural and otherwise. Ultimately, we follow the main character all the way from trauma and pain and love to barbarous death, and something more.

An excellent novel for those open to its method and frankness. ( )

Ha!
This book. This book... I gave this to a girl who became my wife for 12 years...
At the time I had not read the book, nor knew what the book was about at all.
I did not find out that I won the girl due to the sexual fantasy until half a dozen years later. . . ( )

Harold at Twice-Told raved about this novel, but it was Emir Kusturica's interets in bringing it to the screen which inspired my reading. I felt it contrived and flat, though the premise is engaging: the prescience of hysteria. The bits that Thomas stole are the best in the book: shame on you, Donald. ( )

The first few chapters felt like an excuse to write deeply graphic sexual fantasies, but reading on it all ties in. I really liked this book, I need to read it again now I know where it leads so I can get the full picture. My favourite book I've read this year. ( )