A review by badpriestess
Switching Time: A Doctor's Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities by Richard Baer

1.0

I admit I did not read the book in its entirety, but I read enough to form an opinion. Honestly, the story dragged, big time. Learning about Karen's personalities was interesting, but it seems to me that the lengthy conversations Dr. Baer had with each of them slowed the plot down a great deal. Also, I felt that the magnitude of Karen's trauma was so great that it felt unbelievable. In a bad way. I found myself shaking my head as each piece of her past was revealed, not in sadness but in skepticism. That's not to say the things that happened to Karen couldn't happen in real life. I simply mean that the author seemed to be needlessly piling bad things onto a character, and it didn't help me connect with her at all. If anything, it distanced me from her. The book is very graphic in nature, which I didn't really mind. However, I couldn't finish it due to its slow plot and questionable characterization. Perhaps I wasn't aware of what exactly I was getting into when I started this book, but I am not at all interested in picking it up again.