Trauma | Patrick Mcgrath | This book will knock you off of your feet. . .

Trauma | Patrick Mcgrath | Gripping, very human story

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Trauma

	Trauma Patrick Mcgrath Knopf, 2008 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as "an uncommon storyteller [with a] trademark ability to probe the layers of the human psyche," Patrick McGrath has written his most addictive and enthralling novel yet.

Charlie Weir's family is comprehensively dysfunctional ? abandoned by his father, his mother ravaged by that betrayal, and his brother, Walt, a successful artist, less Charlie's ally than his rival. So it's hardly surprising that he should find a vocation in psychiatry in New York City, counseling traumatized war veterans returning home from Vietnam. Agnes Magill, the sister of one damaged soldier, soon becomes Charlie's wife. But the suicide of her brother, Danny, ends the marriage, leaving Charlie to endure a corrosive loneliness even as Manhattan grows steadily more dirty and dangerous around him.

Then, in the haunting aftermath of Charlie's mother's death, Agnes returns to offer him the solace that he has never been able to provide for her. Almost simultaneously, he is presented with a quite different anodyne ? a volatile woman whose irresistible beauty, tinged though it is with an air of grievous suffering, jeopardizes everything he has hoped might restore his dwindling faith in his calling, his future and himself.

As Charlie's hold on sanity weakens, and events conspire to send him reeling headlong toward the abyss, the themes of family, passion and madness - by now synonymous with Patrick McGrath's writing ? rightly assume "the inevitability of myth," as Tobias Wolff has written of his work, in "fiction of a depth and power we hardly hope to encounter anymore." A genuine psychological thriller, Trauma is an experience at once unnerving, unsettling and utterly riveting.

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This book will knock you off of your feet. . .

Trauma is an intense book. It thoroughly grips you and refuses to loosen up on it's hold, long after you complete the book. The book is only 210 pages in length, but the pages are written so well that it is impossible to feel cheated. I don't want to give away plot details, so I'll just end by saying that everyone should read this book. It is well worth your time and money.

Gripping, very human story

I immediately was drawn into this book. It's characters were well drawn, the plot although going back and forth in time was compelling and I didn't see the end coming. Charlie is almost heart-breaking, as he suffers through relationships in spite of being a psychiatrist trained in helping others through their problems.
An excellent novel!

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Past Catches Up

A probing psychological study of a man's deterioration is the subject of this novel. Charles Weir is a successful but troubled psychiatrist, brought up in a dysfunctional family on Manhattan's upper West Side. His older brother, a successful artist, is more of an antagonist than a supportive sibling. His mother favors Charles' brother, creating conflict. The ne'er-do-well father leaves the family.

Charlie, after leaving Johns Hopkins, takes a prestigious position at a hospital treating Vietnam veterans. His reputation grows. The sister of one of the patients befriends Charlie; ultimately they marry and have a daughter. Then her brother commits suicide and everything begins to fall apart. Seven years later Charlie is introduced by his brother to a beautiful woman; they form a relationship until it too falls apart. When Charlie's mother dies, his ex-wife offers solace, and he begs her to return. These relationships and more are explored in depth by the author in this psychological thriller.

Subsequent events plunge Charlie into a mental abyss as past remembrances and traumas are unveiled. Written with deep insight into the human psyche, the author delves profoundly into the egos and development of the various characters with a penetrating eye. Recommended.

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Slow Moving, Moody and Well....Not Up to Snuff

I picked up Patrick McGrath's latest book because I'd read and enjoyed "Spider", but this book is not nearly as interesting. The prose, while mostly quite beautiful, is also so dark, so dull. It's a good thing it's not a very long book at 200 or so pages. I believe Mr. McGrath should have given us a few hints about the ending of this book, even though it was quite predictable. It just would have been a more entertaining book had he dropped a few crumbs along the way. I also had a problem with the editing of this book. Was the heavy prose that hard to slog through that at least one glaring mistake could be over looked? On page 27 these words are written: "She turned toward me......propped her head on her chin to gaze at me." Huh? Propped her head on her chin? I know what McGrath meant, but come on, that's just wrong. I like complicated, psychiatric plots, so I will probably read Mr. McGrath again......but not too soon.

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Dashed off?

If you're hoping for a soul-baring by one of McGrath's fascinatingly damaged narrators, think twice before buying Trauma. As a fan of Dr. Haggard's Disease, Spider, and Asylum, I looked forward to more of the same sort of psychological study in Trauma. It actually belongs to a different genre from McGrath's other books -- not modern gothic (though there is a brief nod in that direction at the end), but a more mainstream exploration of an American psychiatrist struggling to live and work under the burden of a repressed childhood trauma. As the story progresses we're given clues to the nature of the damage, but when the moment of revelation came I found myself only mildly interested. Though Trauma is well plotted and written (I doubt McGrath could do less if he tried), it seemed to me that its author, too, was only mildly interested. Mistakes in the text (e.g., confusion between "lie" and "lay", & between saints Stephen and Sebastian) strengthen the impression that both writer and editor gave less attention to Trauma than they might have done. I'll always be a McGrath devotee, but this particular book fails to grip.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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