{"id":11120,"date":"2024-08-19T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-19T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11120"},"modified":"2024-08-19T11:29:34","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T15:29:34","slug":"tell-me-what-you-think-the-problem-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11120","title":{"rendered":"“Tell Me What You Think the Problem Is”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

French Windows by Antoine Laurain<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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This unconventional short novel by French author Antoine Laurain, translated into English by Louise Rogers Lalaurie, proves once again that delving into another person\u2019s psyche is tricky business. You know from the cover that the book is a murder mystery, but what is this murder? When and where does it occur? And when the event finally appears in the story, the victim and perpetrator are a surprise. What the book has been up to in reaching that point is a trip through the richly imagined garden of a psychiatric patient\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parisian psychiatrist Dr. J. Faber relates his encounters with a new patient, Nathalia Guitry, a beautiful young woman who is a successful photographer. But she\u2019s stopped taking pictures. In fact, she says the last photograph she took was of a murder. Shocked, Faber ends the session. Nathalia returns for a second appointment and reveals that she spends her days observing the people in the flats opposite hers. Observing is what she\u2019s good at, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get their conversations started, he suggests she write down what she thinks she\u2019s seeing\u2014the stories of these other people\u2019s lives. He hopes her written words will be a window into her own thoughts. She agrees, and she writes interesting and clever stories from these other people\u2019s points of view, which become chapters in the book. Some of these stories become so engaging, you may wish they weren\u2019t so short. They also capture many aspects of daily life in Paris, deconstructing French people\u2019s attitudes and preoccupations. I felt as if that apartment building revealed an entire world through its residents\u2019 friendships, regrets, ambitions, and longings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what about that murder? You just have to wait for it<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Order a copy here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jack & I<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Laury Egan\u2019sJack & I<\/em> is the dark tale of a 16-year-old New Jersey boy growing up in a succession of foster homes offering varying degrees of sympathy and exploitation. Most of his problems result from undiagnosed Dissociative Identity Disorder \u2013 what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes, Jack is his painfully shy and socially inept self, but when his alter ego takes over he is brash, aggressive, and predatory. The unpredictable emergence of this other Jack (whom I\u2019ll call Jack2 for this review) is one of the reasons foster families don\u2019t keep him long. Egan states up-front that her depiction of Dissociative Identity Disorder takes a few liberties for fiction\u2019s purposes, but the condition usually originates in early childhood trauma. Jack has learned not just to seal off this trauma, he also hides the existence of Jack2. He has only fragmentary memories of Jack2\u2019s misdeeds, and sometimes none at all, though he has to bear the punishment and social exclusion that result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Jack is a sympathetic character, Jack2 is not, and with a story involving the sexual exploitation of minors Jack and I<\/em> is a difficult read. The depravity of the adults involved is shocking, but Jack2 is completely complicit and is disdainful of Jack, upon whom his whole existence depends. But don\u2019t despair. At last, there may be light at the end of the tunnel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The previous book by Egan reviewed here, The Psychologist\u2019s Shadow<\/a><\/em>, also featured a significant psychological component, and the author handles these issues with great sensitivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u02bcs an extreme case study, yes, as well as a reminder of how badly the world treats the most vulnerable among us and how high the stakes are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Order a copy here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

French Windows by Antoine Laurain This unconventional short novel by French author Antoine Laurain, translated into English by Louise Rogers Lalaurie, proves once again that delving into another person\u2019s psyche is tricky business. You know from the cover that the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Of all the world's mysteries, the ones in the human mind may be the deepest.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[272,52,1288,126],"tags":[392],"class_list":["post-11120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","category-crime","category-culture","category-reading-2","tag-psychological-thriller"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Tm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11125,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11120\/revisions\/11125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}