The Listener
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Bertram Reiner, a charismatic and brilliant man diagnosed with a severe case of Battle Fatigue is treated by Dr. Harrison, the distinguished and steadfast head of the hospital, finds the most challenging patient of his career.
Their sessions leave Dr. Harrison slipping into a frightening, but also strangely enlivening twilight existence that renders the boundaries between sanity and insanity disquietingly blurred. When Dr. Harrison discovers that Bertram is having an affair with Matilda, the head nurse, who he himself has feelings for, his own state of yearning rises and throws his sanity into the balance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A psychiatrist turns out to be his own most difficult case in this slackly plotted first novel from Nayman (after the collection Awake in the Dark). In 1947, Dr. Henry Harrison, the director of the New York City area insane asylum Shadowbrook, begins treating Bertram Reiner, a German-born biochemistry Ph.D. who fought for the U.S. during WWII and claims to have committed himself to hide from his brother, a former Nazi. Shortly after receiving a letter claiming to be from Bertram's brother's wife, Henry sees a trespasser on the Shadowbrook grounds and begins to think Bertram might be telling the truth. Henry is also struggling with his own ghosts: he's haunted by the memory of a young female patient whose tragic death caused Henry to start using opium; his marriage is failing; and he's increasingly attracted to a nurse. Nayman plumbs the murky ethics of the analyst-patient relationship and tackles moral questions of collaboration and guilt, but her story struggles beneath a mountain of metaphysical weight. Meanwhile, philosophical allusions pile up as increasingly implausible plot twists and awkwardly timed flashbacks prevent this novel from becoming the psychological thriller it aspires to be.
