Kirkus Reviews QR Code
AN AMERICAN MYSTIC by Michael Gurian

AN AMERICAN MYSTIC

by Michael Gurian

Pub Date: March 1st, 2000
ISBN: 0-670-88296-8
Publisher: Viking

An American Mystic ($24.95; Mar.; 288 pp.; 0-670-88296-8): Psychotherapist Gurian (The Good Son, 1999) offers his

debut novel, a rather mushy account in the tradition of The Razor’s Edge, describing a young man’s search for enlightenment. Our hero, Ben Brickman, is an American student in Paris. Badly stalled on his psychology thesis (the subject is divine hallucinations), Ben knocks about Paris somewhat aimlessly, performing magic tricks on the street and suffering a series of increasingly strange dreams at home. Eventually he meets Josef Kader, a mystic and scholar who invites Ben to travel to Kader’s native land of Turkey. There, in coastal towns along the Aegean Sea, hundreds of people have experienced strange hallucinations prophesying the advent of a savior (called "the Magician"), who promises to reveal himself at the dawn if the 21st century. Ben accepts the invitation and leaves for the small Turkish island of Lobos, where he undergoes a succession of ten trials on his path

to enlightenment. Well-conceived and written with real style and grace, but altogether too hokey in the end.