Customer Reviews

Ondine's Curse

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Ondine's Curse is a good first novel. This book will be of particular interest to those who are interested in the relationship between large drug companies and their researchers. Set in Montreal shortly after the Marc Lepine attacks the heroine of the story begins a travel through her own psyche in an attempt to resolve her traumatic experience. She is aided on her journey by some psychiatrists with questionable ethics. The novel is disjointed in parts but offers excellent character development and offers a thoroughly interesting take on some well known historical facts.

Excellent, brilliant writer. This century's most psychologically intuitive author. You squirm when you read his stories; so real you feel like you're in the mind of his subjects' most intimate, and often dangerously exciting, thoughts. The reviews were excellent!

His new book of short stories 'Wound Ballistics' also blew me away with his insight. I couldn't put either book down and a week later found myself reading both books again! They got even better.

This book blew me away - mysterious, perverse, awesome mood piece. As dark as Kafka, echoes of Pynchon (the earlier stuff). It's about a "Biography"-style TV reporter, Robert Strasser, who has to interview a world-famous psychiatrist, Dr. Werther Acheson, who's this weirdly machiavellian character. His history is the history of 20th century psychiatry with all its perverse twists: crackpot cures, drugs (who knew Ecstasy was developed by a drug company at the turn of the century?).
Along the way Strasser meets Ondine, a patient at the psych institute, and tries to dig information out of her. He falls in love but Ondine's really damaged with posttraumatic flashbacks. She's this id character, trying to understand history (she's a historian) emotionally rather than intellectually.
I've got to mention Dr. Kotzwara, one of the people Strasser interviews. This guy's a shrink studying paraphiliacs (sex disorders) - totally out there doing these wild experiments.
Sex, drugs and psychiatry - very intense. It'll warp your mind. Like a really smart William S. Burroughs on 21st century drugs. Unforgettable!