Trauma Book

Another author I've decided to check out based on the impression from his film adaptations. This one to greater results than Walter Kirn. McGrath is certainly a talented author, his narrative is great, the rest I'm not so sure about. Following the maxim of psychiatrists being crazier than those they try to help, Charlie Weir is a psychiatrist adrift. He specializes in, of course, trauma, and yet is so profoundly haunted by his own traumatic childhood that he finds himself unable to sustain any sort of loving relationship for a duration. An interesting character certainly, but he and the entire book is so lost in constant analysis that the effect is distancing and occasionally tiresome. And yes, according to Socrates the unexamined life isn't worth living, but I'm not quite sure examining it to such extent is a great idea either. I suppose your opinion of psychiatry is integral to your enjoyment of this book. Another thing is that McGrath's writing is often referred to as gothic. Well, unless the definition has changed and quick internet search shows that it hasn't, with exception of a particularly atmospheric asylum setting towards the end, this really isn't gothic at all. Didn't matter to me, but might to some. It's dark, but of a distinctly different penumbral variety. A specific brand of bleak, sanity questioning meditation on the subtleties of madness. Compelling enough and quick enough of a read to get through in one afternoon, but not quite engaging enough to, pun alert, go crazy over.