AUTHOR: F.R. TALLIS
Pages: 372
Date: 09/06/2013
Grade: 4
Details: ARC received from Macmillan
Through Nudge
Own
“A man dreams that he is a
butterfly, and in the dream he has no knowledge of his life as a human being.
When he wakes up he asks himself two questions: am I a man, who just dreamed
that he was a butterfly? Or am I really a butterfly, now dreaming that I am a
man?”
James Richardson, the narrator of this story, is a young and promising
psychiatrist in England
in the 1950’s. When he is offered the opportunity to work under the esteemed
Dr. Hugh Maitland he accepts the offer immediately. Without a second thought he
says goodbye to his old life and travels to Wyldehope Hall in Suffolk to take up his new post. In Wyldehope
Hall, Dr. Maitland is running an experimental new form of treatment for
patients with long term and extreme disturbances. The patients, six women, are
kept asleep for months on end in the hope that they will, eventually, wake up
cured of their problems. If the experiment were to be successful it would bring
professional glory for both doctors involved in it.
It isn’t long after arriving in Wyldehope Hall that Richardson is starting to notice strange and
at times disturbing occurrences. It is nothing he can put his fingers on, but
something about the place feels wrong and some strange happenings aren’t easily
explained through logical reasoning.
More worrying is Dr. Maitland’s reluctance to discuss the medical
history of the women they are treating in “The Sleep Room”. And how is it
possible that the six women appear to be dreaming at exactly the same time?
Although it is clear that there are others in the Hall who are
uncomfortable in their surroundings, Richardson
can’t find anybody who is willing to share their experiences with him. How can
he discuss the disturbing things he’s felt and seen with others without having
his own sanity questioned? And is the danger he senses real or something Richardson is only
imagining? Is there something wrong with the house or is our young doctor
losing his mind?
Part medical and part ghost story this is a fascinating book. What
appears at first to be a purely medical story, focusing on dubious and
controversial medical practices, slowly but steadily turns into something
completely different. The ghostly manifestations are mentioned in an
understated manner. The narrator, James Richardson, is very uncomfortable with
the idea that something otherworldly might be going on around him. His logical
mind and training don’t allow him to accept that the things he is experiencing
might have anything other than a logical conclusion. And even when he reaches
the point where he can no longer deny that the manifestations have to be
supernatural he goes out of his way to find a logic based explanation for them.
While this makes perfect sense as far as the character of Richardson is concerned, it does mean that
this story isn’t nearly as ghostly as it might have been.
The medical side of the story on the other hand is, for me, the real
thriller. The absolute power of Dr. Maitland, the unquestioning way in which
those working for him go along with his ideas and treatments and the way in
which the women in the Sleep Room are treated is the stuff of nightmares.
Especially since everything described in this story sounds very credible and
realistic. This story combined with the little I know about the normal
practices in psychiatric hospitals in times past makes it all too easy to
believe that what is happening to the women in this story is probably not as
far-fetched as I might like to think.
I liked the way the tension in this story creeps up on the reader. In an
almost imperceptible way this book gets darker and darker. So imperceptible in
fact that by the time it all comes crashing down I was taken somewhat by
surprise. And then, just when I thought the story was finished and things had
come to a dramatic but overall satisfying conclusion the author threw me for a
loop, leaving me uncertain about what exactly had happened and what to believe.
It made for an impressive but not entirely satisfying conclusion.
I like that Tallis, who in his previous books has a fervent follower of
Freud’s theories as his main protagonist, chose to have the main characters in
this book debunk Freud and Jung as unscientific.
Mr. Tallis produces good books. His writing is smooth and his stories and
characters are fascinating. Through his descriptions of the area surrounding
Wyldehope Hall he gives the story exactly the right atmosphere for ghostly
manifestations. And his knowledge of medical procedures and theories is obvious
although not surprising considering that he is a clinical psychologist. The
fact that he clearly knows what he is writing about makes this story more
disturbing, rather than less.
Overall I would call this a fascinating combination of medical thriller
and ghost story. The completely unexpected revelations at the end of the book
only strengthen that fascination, although they also left me with one or two,
unanswered, questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment