Howard Batey reviewed Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Case Study
5 stars
Terrific!
Paperback, 279 pages
English language
Published May 7, 2022 by Saraband / Contraband.
Case Study
4 stars
(5 reviews)
London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character.
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents these notebooks interspersed with his own biographical research into Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling – and often wickedly humorous – meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.
lokroma reviewed Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Review of 'Case Study' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
There are two narrators in this novel, and one is highly unreliable. The first narrator receives five notebooks written by a woman who believes her sister was pushed to suicide by her psychiatrist in the 60s during the anti-psychiatry, myth of mental illness era. He publishes the notebooks as a book which also includes a chapter after each of the notebooks containing biographical details that he has written about the offending psychiatrist.
A look at identity and madness that is both playful and disturbing, I read this in a couple of sittings. I'm about to start His Bloody Project by the same author and shortlisted for the Booker in 2015.
Dee reviewed Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Review of 'Case Study' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Entertaining read, I really loved the character development of "Rebecca Smyth" and how difficult Burnet makes it to take this as fiction. It is one of those books you start and finish in one go.
5/5
