Butcher
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 21 May 2024
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- HUF5,790.00
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- Pre-Order
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- HUF5,790.00
Publisher Description
From one of our most accomplished storytellers, an extraordinary and arresting novel about a women’s asylum in the nineteenth century, and a terrifying doctor who wants to change the world.
In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, “Father of Gyno-Psychiatry,” as he ascends from professional anonymity to national renown. Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics, where he reigns. There, he is allowed to continue his practice, unchecked for decades, making a name for himself by focusing on women who have been neglected by the state—women he subjects to the most grotesque modes of experimentation. As he begins to establish himself as a pioneer of nineteenth-century surgery, Weir’s ambition is fueled by his obsessive fascination with a young Irish indentured servant named Brigit, who becomes not only Weir’s primary experimental subject, but also the agent of his destruction.
Narrated by Silas Weir’s eldest son, who has repudiated his father’s brutal legacy, Butcher is a unique blend of fiction and fact, a nightmare voyage through the darkest regions of the American psyche conjoined, in its startling conclusion, with unexpected romance. Once again, Joyce Carol Oates has written a spellbinding novel confirming her position as one of our celebrated American visionaries of the imagination.
‘Simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious and creative writer going, as far as I’m concerned’ Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl
'A master storyteller' The Times
Reviews
'[Oates] takes this very real nightmare of [the ‘father of gyno-psychiatry’] and knits together a story about a young Irish servant who becomes Weir’s ‘subject,’ but also the object of his downfall. Sounds like the perfect American novel, delving deep into the horrors of invention' Lit Hub, 'Most Anticipated Books of 2024'
Praise for Joyce Carol Oates:
‘One of the greatest — and most productive — living American writers’ Financial Times
'Oates is a massive literary heavyweight, and many earnestly believe she could knock the other contenders for the title of Great American Novelist – Updike, Roth, Wolfe, Mailer' Guardian
‘One of the greatest writers of our time’ John Gardner, author of Grendel
‘Oates' precise and inspired writing is close to witchcraft' Jeanne Moreau
‘[A] notoriously prolific chronicler of America’s cracked, calamitous heart’ Esquire
‘America’s preeminent fiction writer’ The New Yorker
‘Simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious and creative writer going, as far as I’m concerned’ Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl
'A master storyteller' The Times
‘Oates’s imagination is as unique, dystopian and vivid as Lewis Carroll’s’ Rose Tremain, author of Absolutely and Forever
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Oates (Zero-Sum) delivers a deliciously arch and relentlessly gloomy fictional biography of Dr. Silas Aloysius Weir, a character based on two 19th-century doctors. Weir, known during his time as the "Father of Modern Gyno-Psychiatry," was also called the "Red-Handed Butcher" for his gruesome experiments on women during his 35-year stint at the New Jersey State Asylum for Female Lunatics in Trenton. The bulk of the novel is presented as a Nabokovian manuscript composed of accounts by Weir's colleagues, family members, and patients, which have been assembled and annotated by his oldest son, Jonathan. Banished from a Pennsylvania hospital after a failed cranial surgery on an infant, Weir applies his "colossal egotism" to his new patients at the asylum, asserting that "mental illness in females is a consequence of infection, particularly of the female genitals." To that end, he turns a tablespoon into a speculum and introduces sadistic treatments with misleading names like the "Chair of Tranquility." The recipient of many of his surgeries is Brigit Kenealy, a young, indentured albino Irish servant who becomes his romantic obsession and assistant. Oates's scathing indictment of the physical and psychological treatment of women by the medical establishment makes for compulsive but challenging reading. Unlike the ghastly procedures depicted, Oates's inventive gothic novel pays off.
