Customer Reviews

Gordon: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Louisa is unable to break away from Richard Gordon, the older lover who draws her more and more close to him the more chilling his behavior towards her becomes. Louisa can't understand her inability to leave what most of us would consider an abusive relationship - one in which she paradoxically finds refuge. Gordon remains tantilizingly enigmatic to the end.

Sex here is a reflection of their relationship, rather than the basis for it. It's difficult to believe this was written almost fifty years ago - bravo, Ms. Templeton, for finally taking credit for this fascinating novel. (But for the very last page, this would've been a 5-star book.)

After I read that Kathryn Harrison said Gordon was her favorite love story, I was beyond intrigued. Reading about the abusive relationship between the narrator and Gordon is a little bit like being unable to pull yourself from watching a gruesome car wreck, but I would highly, highly recommend the novel to anyone who has a stomach for it. I've read this book a few times and have gotten multiple friends to read it, and none of them could put it down, either. Edith Templeton's dark and sexy book is a must-read!

It's not the duel with psychiatry that makes this book great. It was banned for explicit sex in England (apparently, it was that unusual) in the 1960s. But it's Templeton's amazing writing technique that's truly eye-opening. The opening scene is the fastest, most furious, and funniest that has ever hooked me into a book.

An interesting story about love and sexual discovery, told from the woman's perspective. Louisa's experiences with Dr. Gordon are unusual and 'improper' but it touches something deep inside of her and she is captivated by him. She tells herself she does not like him but continues to see him and to meet all his demands. His analysis of her past and dreams torment her, but also intrigues her, yet she does not fully grasp the extent of her relationship with Gordon until the very end.

Templeton's idea's around the conflict many woman experience between a 'sense of duty' or doing what internally feels right, is relevant even today; she knows what Gordon is doing is considered wrong but she wants it. It gives her something she needs and elevates her sense of who she is. Her message is clear, "If you keep yourself from doing what you want to do, you'll wander like a tired guest on this dim earth." Louisa and Dr. Crombie's discussions at the end gave meaning to the whole story, it wasn't until I reached this point that I fully understood her message. Most of us choose out of a sense of duty, or what is expected of us but she warns us against that. The question I am left with is, How realistic is it that anyone will find their perfect union?

Gordon is the story, told from her point of view, of a woman picked up one night in a London pub by a proverbial tall, dark stranger. Louise has returned from service in Germany as a captain in the British Army following the end of World War Two. She is all at sixes and nines and hopes to run into one of her `old gang' in the pub. Instead, she meets Gordon, who singles her out from the crowd and whisks her away into the night. Louise is surprised at her docility in going with him. She is further surprised when, while they are walking in a park, Gordon literally sweeps her off her feet and forces himself on her. She has neither consented nor objected and wonders if the man's acts qualify as rape. He finishes with her quickly, before she can decide how to react, and tells her to meet him the next day.

Louise becomes enthralled by Gordon. He dominates her ruthlessly, probing into the inner recesses of her mind to ferret out the dark secrets of her life. She submits to him sexually while struggling to maintain some semblance of equality with him. Her efforts are doomed.

Gordon is a psychiatrist, also recently returned from service in the army. He is cold, calculating and is thrilled by his ability to torment Louise mentally, using the tools of his profession. Louise reveals that she has fled her loveless marriage and is waiting for a divorce. Gordon picks at the scabs of her wounded psyche revealing to her for the first time the nature of her compulsions and the life of self delusion she has led.

The novel was written in the sixties and its publication was banned as pornographic. The scenes of sex are tame by today's standards, yet compelling as Louise becomes his sexual thrall. Louise, while sexually experienced, would be considered sexually naïve today. She is shocked when Gordon insists on using her while she is menstruating, having believed that dire health consequences would follow. She is humiliated when Gordon takes the time for a full examination of her vagina, never having seen it herself.

It is only years later that Louise finally comes to terms with their intense, brief relationship. This realization helps her find what appears to be true happiness in a surprising way.

Gordon is a compelling read. One might quibble with the ease and suddenness with which Louise falls under Gordon's domination, a weakness of the novel but a premise on which the entire work depends. The atmosphere of post war London is well recreated and the methodical way Gordon assumes control over Louise is hypnotic. I recommend the book highly.

Some time ago, I read Edith Templeton's book " The Darts of Cupid". Upon reviewing the book online a fellow reader recommended I check out her best work "Gordon". Ms. Templeton was definitely unconventional and her stories I read were so original that I had to pick up on this recommendation and check out what her novel will be like. I was not disappointed, and this must have been one of the best purchases I ever made.

Book is about complicated relationship between a young woman and her lover who happens to be psychiatrist. They meet by chance, in a London bar, shortly after WWII is over. Young womand has left her husband and trying to find her way in a new post war world and her lover, Gordon, is using his professional skills to dominate her in every possible way. Both of them feed on each other emotionally, sexually and develop strange dependency on each other. Their game drains and strengthens them both, and it is once in a lifetime experience for both.

Book was banned in 1960s in Europe and yet it has found following in the underground distribution. It is well written, sort of homage to both Goethe and psychoanalysis and deeply personal. I cannot rememebr if I ever read any other work like this one and that is what excites me about this work.

I had a hard time deciding whether or not I liked this book. The style is excellent and the point, as I interpret it, is unexceptional, but the events depicted are painful to read, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

This is not so much a story about a love affair with a psychiatrist as it is about psychoanalysis with a lover. That it was banned in the UK 50 years ago because of a handful of brief, not very explicit, sex scenes, shows how far the Western world has changed. What still grates, though, is that Richard Gordon, the psychiatrist, abuses the narrator and she finds fulfillment in it. The book narrates the course of their relationship, predominantly by recounting the analysis to which Gordon subjects the narrator. Interestingly, as the book progresses, the narrator loses more and more of her individuality, becoming more dependant on Gordon.

The point of the novel is a sharp attack on the culture of therapy. Gordon's physical and mental abuse of the narrator causes damage to her even though she never admits it. It is the analysis itself, though, stripping away the self sufficiency that she had built by relying on the safe psychic crutches of tradition, duty and dignity, which causes the most permanent scars. By the end of the book, long after Gordon has left her life, his effect on her causes her to sacrifice a happy marriage (depicted in that last page which the previous reviewer was so disturbed by).

Psychiatry has made the narrator the slave of the psychiatric profession and although she claims to be liberated, her life is symbolized in the decor of the Belgrave Park Hotel, in which she stays in a return to London in the final scenes of the novel. Where once the hotel was slightly old fashioned, full of odd nooks and crannies, lush fabrics and rich furniture, it had become sterile and ugly, functional but characterless. A world which shifts from the Plaza Hotel to a Motel 8 is not really progress, the author seems to say, and it is hard to disagree.

Easily one of my favorite reads. By the 3rd time through I was able to grasp the core of what the character was about.