A psychological tale that’s riveting, perceptive, and accessible.
A doctor struggles to understand a woman who allegedly murdered her own child in Lev’s (A Feast of Tears, 2010) thriller.
Dr. Ephraim Ligget prefers being left alone as he works in the psychiatric treatment ward of the Western Washington State Hospital. Half of his face is scarred due to a fire years ago that killed his parents, and his apparent survivor’s guilt has led to him to create another, secret personality, Dr. Hamburger, “the angry part of Ligget’s soul,” who occasionally takes over. Ligget is handling a case for the admission ward of the Forensic Unit, which treats the criminally insane, so Jennifer Stanley becomes his newest patient. Cops arrested her after her son, Edward, claimed that she tried to kill him; he further stated that he witnessed her murdering his younger brother, Robert, whose body police uncover. Jennifer’s lawyer is hoping for an insanity defense, but Ligget is merely assessing her competency to stand trial, which isn’t necessarily related to her state of mind during the supposed crime. Still, the psychologist has trouble completing his report. Tests indicate that Jennifer has a high IQ, so she may be feigning some behavior, such as her disbelief that her son is dead. But Ligget ultimately concludes that she’s not manipulating him and that she’s suffering from PTSD from an unidentified trauma. Although he does eventually rule on whether she’s competent for trial, he remains obsessed with the question of her sanity and looks into her personal life: “His life had been reduced to this—a single case and a single person.” Has Jennifer merely deceived him—or is she actually in need of help? Lev’s novel effectively establishes its hospital setting, where much of the story takes place. One scene, for example, opens with Mrs. Densby and Mrs. Brown at a tea party, anticipating a waiter bringing them tea; it turns out that the two ladies are patients, and the “waiter” who ignores them is a staff member. The hospital is populated by a curious mix of characters, including Frank, a patient experiencing tactile hallucinations who’s been seen by multiple doctors. But although the patients are shown to be a burden at times, the staff members cause just as many problems by skimping on job duties or by too easily prescribing antipsychotic medications. Jennifer is, appropriately, one of the more striking characters—an enigma who understandably baffles Ligget; her son Edward’s perspective reveals specifics about Robert’s murder but provides readers with no more insight into Jennifer’s mind than the doctor has. Nevertheless, Ligget himself, with his alternate personality, is engaging and multifaceted. The author, a practicing psychologist, writes in a style that’s intelligent but always intelligible, even when employing psychiatric jargon, as in his description of Ligget’s initial assessment of Jennifer: “Thinking is realistic and goal directed, speech is relevant, no evidence of hallucinations or delusions, possible dissociative symptoms.” Ligget’s analysis of Jennifer becomes an ongoing mystery, and Lev opts for a pragmatic ending in which nothing’s black and white.
A psychological tale that’s riveting, perceptive, and accessible.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-974315-16-1
Page Count: 276
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
