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The Other Woman

Name: The Other Woman
Author: Abigail Van Alyn
ISBN: 978-0-692-73479-7

by Abigail Van Alyn ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 22, 2016

An often entertaining mystery about extreme psychotherapy.

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Intense psychodramas involving two women and their domineering shrink escalate to skullduggery and violence in this noirish debut suspense novel.

San Francisco Bay Area psychiatrist Robert Buchanan’s Reichian praxis of forcing patients to confront “the primal truth about sex, the drives, the instincts” by needling them with sarcasm as he sketches pornographic cartoons may seem like an inappropriate way to treat sexual assault victims. But after two years of such therapy, Anna Sheffield, a rape survivor suffering from PTSD and sculptor’s block, thinks she’s making some progress. However, her confidence in his methods wanes when another patient, Michele, a gorgeous exotic dancer and child molestation victim, tells her that Robert fathered her 18-month-old child during a session; the striptease she performed for him, complete with an undulating serpent-in-Eden tattoo, eroded his willpower. Michele’s scheme to blackmail Robert into paying or marrying her gradually ropes in the well-meaning Anna and unearths evidence of other sexual misdeeds and suspicious deaths in his past. Robert will use all his powers of seductive manipulation, medical authority, and pharmacological expertise to suppress this evidence. The sleuthing plot at the center of Van Alyn’s meandering yarn sometimes feels contrived and ill-motivated; it’s the kind of story in which people keep asking the heroine why she doesn’t just go the authorities with her suspicions—and they never get a good answer. What redeems the novel, however, is the subtlety and psychological shrewdness of the author’s prose and dialogue, and the vibrant complexity of her characters. Robert, for example, is a masterpiece of bombastic narcissism (“She was too small to tolerate the vast spaces of his inner being,” he muses about his former wife), and Michele is a richly layered tapestry of delusional romanticism and self-centered money-grubbing, whose hard-boiled bravado masks her raw neediness. Even secondary characters possess a Dickensian piquancy; their actions don’t always make sense, but it’s fascinating to get inside their heads.

An often entertaining mystery about extreme psychotherapy.

Pub Date: July 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-692-73479-7

Page Count: 390

Publisher: ShadowWorks Press

Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

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THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

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THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.