An intense psychological dissection of love.
In Seabaugh’s debut novel, a psychotherapist crosses an ethical line while working with a patient engaged to a volatile woman.
Dr. Jack Cochran isn’t just an experienced psychotherapist; he’s also the author of a best-selling self-help book, Winning at the Game of Love. But his success with love is only on paper; his marriage failed six years ago. Still, he remains hopeful of future possibilities and confident that he can help his many tormented patients. Then he starts treating Andrew, a genuine, empathetic guy with an unstable, damaged fiancee—a woman not unlike Jack’s ex-wife. Jack is haunted by the many parallels between his and Andrew’s stories; while Andrew presses on to save his relationship, Jack gave up on his. The doctor’s unraveling emotions lead to a deceit that could cost him his career. Seabaugh, a psychologist himself, devotes much of the story to analysis, philosophical debates and internal monologues about love: its intensity, its challenges, and its ability to heal and to wound. The narrative gets quite heavy at times, with very few lighter interludes, and every character in the book—Jack, his ex-wife, even his landlady-with-benefits—talks like a therapist. “Cynicism is the greatest denial of love’s possibilities and the greatest defense against the awareness of our own failure,” says Jack as he accuses his pal of “giving up on love.” Readers interested in psychotherapy will appreciate the behind-the-desk point of view. Skeptics, meanwhile, will appreciate a secondary question that the plot brings forward: Is the mission of psychotherapy plausible? The inevitable confrontation at the end is disappointingly anticlimactic, and there are a few too many typos. That said, Seabaugh is a skillful writer, and readers are likely to empathize with Jack’s decisions, good and bad.
An intense psychological dissection of love.Pub Date: March 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-1453752579
Page Count: 238
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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