Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet

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This is yet another Booker Prize longlist book that I may not fully understand the genius of it. The narrative is focused on psychiatry, and how those who practice it are not always best qualified to pass judgment on the sanity or otherwise of those they treat. So maybe that is part of my blindness because I, too, am a mental health professional. Then there is the issue that the author is presented as a character in the novel. I am not a big fan of this, but it does seem to recur-- within the book it is described as the work of one GMB, a writer who has become interested in Collins Braithwaite, a psychoanalyst against whom numerous charges have been leveled. This is the 1960's and GMB has come upon Braithwaite’s published collection of case studies, entitled Untherapy, in a Glasgow bookshop, which leads him to the idea of writing his biography. Although the plan meets with little enthusiasm from his agent and publisher, GMB’s fascination with Braithwaite is redoubled when he is contacted by a stranger, offering him six notebooks containing the journal of his cousin, whom Grey claims was a patient of Braithwaite. The notebooks contain allegations he is sure GMB will find of interest. It is all pretty much what you would expect, and once again, an unflattering depiction of mental health providers.