Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - Case Study

A very clever book, weaving fact into fiction. It was a bit of a (sedate) rollercoaster for me. I started out being fascinated by the two main characters, then began to get irritated by them, and ended up feeling quite sentimental towards them. A lot happens in this book, without very much actually happening.

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jen_prouvaire's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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alisonannk's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Case Study is a work of fiction carefully designed to look like non-fiction to the extent that it is sometimes hard to tell one from the other. Which is obviously the point but something I can find irritating. An author has become interested in the life and work of an influential and somewhat notorious psychiatrist, Arthur Collins Braithwaite. No one seems interested in publishing his work until he receives some notebooks from a relative of a young woman whose sister Veronica, a former client of Braithwaite’s committed suicide. Believing he is responsible for the death she decides to visit Braithwaite herself, under an assumed identity of course. This novel consists of the young woman’s notebooks interspersed with an account of Barithwaite’s life as compiled by the author. Except the author, despite sharing the same initials as Macrae is fictional, as is Braithwaite, as are the diaries etc. It’s all very meta and absolutely nobody is to be trusted or relied upon, despite some people, places and events being real.

Overall this wasn’t the book for me. It felt like an exercise in intellectual cleverness, designed to show off the actual author’s prowess. I like to get emotionally invested in a novel and I was unable to do so here. The atmosphere of 1960s London was vibrantly recreated, and the character studies of both Braithwaite and the notebook writer/Rebecca Smyth were compelling, even if the characters themselves were neither likeable nor reliable. I thought the emotional and mental unravelling of Veronica’s sister was convincing. The book kept my interest throughout and the writing went down smoothly but at the end I was left asking myself what was the point of it all and feeling that perhaps I just wasn’t clever enough for this book.

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