Customer Reviews

Perlman's Ordeal: A Novel

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Hansen's first novel, The Chess Garden, deserves to be ranked with the best books of the 1990's. All of the dozen or so Amazon reviewers gave it five stars and I would happily write a review adding five more. I keep it conspicuously placed on my bookshelf so I am reminded of the fun of reading it. Perlman's Ordeal is another matter. Although the book is every bit the intellectual feast that the Chess Garden was, it lacks a certain spark that would have kept me interested in the story and in its protagonist, Dr. Perlman. Whereas Dr. Uyterhoeven in The Chess Garden was generously open-minded, Dr. Perlman is every bit the man who can't see beyond his rather educated nose. His ordeal is getting past that limitation - something he never completely seems to do. Hansen seems to have let his own main character attentuate his vision. Also, if there was a flaw in The Chess Garden, it was that its characters were not completely rounded - but somewhow it didn't really matter. It does matter in this book since we see everything through (via a third person narrator), Perlman's rather narrow, fretful, selfish eyes. This left me feeling cold. Still, Hansen's a major writer and I look forward to his next book.

It was like one of those long, mysterious dreams you have on Sunday mornings, substantial while experiencing it but gossamer upon reflection. The Chess Garden's merits are well known, and Boone (Hansen's first book, with cowriter Nick Davis) was possibly the best book I ever read in my life. Unfortunately, this book did not live up to the previous promise in my mind.

The premise was irresistable to me. In London at the turn of the (previous) century, a psychiatrist who uses hypnotism to cure patients of various phobias is presented with a teenage girl who has such a sudden and severe fear of water that she has refused to drink for 11 days and almost dies. When he begins to treat her an alternate personality takes over her body, presenting a story akin to the Atlantean myth. This myth enchants a new friend of his, the sister of a dead composer revered by the doctor, and she begins to hold a salon around the girl, playacting the events retold, and threatening the doctor with her spiritualism.

The atmosphere was perfect, and the tension caused by hindsight (Freud is just on the horizon, as is Russian communism and the Holocaust) was superb. Hansen is a writer obsessed with the ideas behind art forms, and he goes into great detail to present philosophical arguments about music here (melody vs. structure) that totally engaged me. Unfortunately, I didn't feel the substance here that I felt in the two previous books. Conflicts were neatly wrapped up but it seemed too pat, and explanations were wholly devoid. (Considering the theme of the novel the author intended to leave one guessing, but I could have used a few more hints than this.) The book is more accessible than Chess Garden (the narrative is more straightforward and less symbolic) and presents many interesting questions, but in the end the protagonists are left unchanged, which to me is the failure of the novel. This would make a great book club book, though, lots to argue about. If it sounds interesting, go ahead and try it, I definitely enjoyed reading it, just got frustrated when I was done. Boone figuratively sliced the top of my head off to let in a cold breeze, and Chess Garden was an intellectual challenge, but this was, IMO, a failed but valiant attempt.

Sometimes I sympathize with those authors whose first novel is brilliantly original and alive. After all, they have expectations to fulfill that must be daunting. They must fret whether the second book will be thought as good, fret that readers will find it too similar and say they are formulaic or too dissimilar and feel betrayed They must fret that they will become a one-book-wonder.

Brooks Hansen's first novel, The Chess Garden, was such an original and inventive book, that he must have been a real fretnik. Judging by his second book, Perlman's Ordeal, he needn't fret anymore.

This book has its similarities to the Chess Garden. It is fantastic in the original sense of the word. It is saturated with myth and fable. It is delightfully original. It is also very different. Perlman, the protagonist in this book, is a crabbed and limited in his personal life as Dr. Uyterhoven was generous and open. Perlman finds his security in routine and in not taking risks. Dr. Uyterhoven would have smothered in the small life Perlman carved out for himself. However, Perlman is forced out of his routine and cast bewilderingly adrift in Atlantis, of all places. This Atlantis, however, is not the real Atlantis as Dr. Uyterhoven's Antipodes are The Antipodes. This Atlantis is in the mind of his patient, Sylvie Blum -- or more accurately, in Nina the "shard" personality that has taken over Sylvie Blum.

Dr. Perlman is an eminent practitioner of "clinical suggestion," the science of curing people through suggestion during a hypnogogic state. He is most definitely NOT a mere hypnotist nor something so bizarre as a mesmerist. Sylvie Blum is brought to him, completely out of protocol, since he prefers patients to ask for his services themselves...meaning patients who are ready for suggestion and success. She is dehydrated, refusing water and positively phobic in her fear of water. She is brought to him, sedated and is being forcefully hydrated. He is upset and expects failure since this patient was brought to him in such a disorderly way.

However, he is intrigued when he brings Sylvie to consciousness (he thinks) and discovers that there is a healthy young girl inside there who not only doesn't fear water but practically craves it. Unfortunately, that healthy young girl says her name is Nina. There begins the tale and what a tale it is, taking you from late 19th century London to the days when gods and goddesses walked the earth with humanity.

The ordeal is Perlman's struggle within himself, for he must break free of his routines and his regimens of treatment in order to successfully treat his patient. For once in his life, he must let events take their course and go along for the ride. And when it all comes back to him, when he must finish the tale, what will he do? Will he follow his regimen and his protocols, his science, or will he let himself fall into the story and be carried by it? Who will win Dr Perlman, art or science?

Dr. Perlman may not agree with me, but I think he did the right thing.

I picked up "Perlman's Ordeal" because the review indicated that the main character was crazy about music. Hansen handled the musical underpinnings quite well. I found it delightful that Perlman's favorite composer (the late Alex Barrett) was giv- en to sessions of "Nonsense" music in which he exercised his imagination through improvisation, even to the point of unlearning what the conser- vatories had taught him. Doctor Perlman, who lived in a scientific straightjacket of his own, desper- ately needed some "nonsense" in his own life. Enter Sylvie/Nina. The desperately unhappy and suppressed Sylvie has seemingly been taken over by a channeled spirit named Nina, whose invisible companion is Oona, an Atlantean princess. Nina cannot be intimidated by Doctor Perlman. Indeed, she so easily wraps him around her finger that soon he is escorting her to Mme. Barrett's house (which, significantly enough, Doctor Perlman wants to go to because his favorite composer grew up there). With encouragement from Mme. Barrett and Lord Stanley (an actor who is also her uncle), Nina's story about Oona blossoms into an elaborate play at which several of Mme. Barrett's friends serve as audience membrs. I found it very hard to out this book down once I'd started it. Doctor Perlman's "ordeal" was anything but an ordeal for this reader.

Smart, intellectual, and surprisingly funny book, but it has some flaws that leave me feeling a little cold. It's almost as if the author is more impressed by the story - and stories - than I was. And the so-called love story fails to move me. I'd definitely give it a solid three stars, and an extra half star for sheer inventiveness and fun, but something goes screwey toward the end. The final actions -- the acting out on stage -- are confusing and not the epiphany we've been waiting for. And the main character's ultimate reserve - his unwillingness to admit his feelings for Madame Helena, or the passive way in which he admits them, even to himself -- is disappointing in the extreme. A mixed bag. In some ways a less ambitious book than Chess Garden, in other ways much funnier and more mature. Still looking forward to his next effort. Can't say that about most.

This book is certainly intriguing and is written with the flair of a true aesthete. I was drawn in by the curious story and found the seven-day plot format to work very well. Unfortunately, I was disappointed by the last third, in which the characters take part in a strange and too-often confusing theatrical enactment of Nina's supposed life in Atlantis. I was desperately awaiting a cathartic culmination to what I saw as a very promising plot development (who doesn't find the concept of Atlantis fascinating?), but was rewarded only with a vague and murky depiction of the Atlantis myth that answered none of my most fervent questions. I'm still not sure what significance is to be found in Perlman's participation in the play-acting at the end, which I felt he gave into out of a desire to pacify Helena; if his character truly had an epiphany concerning Nina's identity and the power of regression therapy, I certainly missed it. For these reasons, I put down PERLMAN'S ORDEAL feeling rather ambivalent about the characters and less than satisfied with the book as a whole.

Brooke Hansen's second solo novel completely satisfies its own ambition - the most we can fairly ask of any work of art. Though "Perlman's Ordeal" touches on the otherworldly, the rug is promptly pulled from under the reader's feet and we are gently reminded that this is not a novel about Atlantis or reincarnation. It's an astoundingly elegant portrayal of a simple sequence of events: Dr. Perlman meets a patient he can't easily handle, and the confidence he invests in himself and in his strict ideology is broken.

Of course, this shiftiness has the slight potential to let down a bit. The reader is easily sucked in by the intruigue and grandeur of this patient's story - is she harboring the spirit of a girl from Atlantis? Hansen so beautifully depicts Perlman's cautious approach to the question, and we share the doctor's frustration when his calculated effort is run aground. The girl, named Sylvie but insisting on "Nina", enchants Perlman's aquaintences with her elaborate story.

As the child's new friends long to hear more and more of her curious history, so does the reader. The effect is thus quite alarming when, alongside Perlman, we are nearly swayed to her growing camp of devotees. Unwilling to re-think the matter, Hansen forces us to, quietly, insistently. We have shared Perlman's ordeal unwittingly.

In this strange calm the reader might feel a bit robbed. He shouldn't - "Perlman's Ordeal" contains some of the most beautiful prose I've read in a long time. Hansen writes with confidence and style. His characters, Perlman in particular, are deeply layered and very complex.

The end result is more subtle than awe-inspiring, more Kubrick than Cameron. It's certainly a winner though - a quiet, odd little winner.

I anxiously awaited this book, after having read the Chess Garden and Boone (his other two books for adults) and am not disappointed! It is a brilliantly told tale of a Dr. who's entire belief system is challenged in a seven day timespan by a young girl brought to him for hypnotherapy treatment. This book soars - and no matter how carefully I read Mr. Hansen's work, the story is so rich and layered, I return to his books again and again and always come away with more than before!

I don't know what caused me to buy this book -- perhaps an Amazon recommendation. In any case, I differ from the more favourable reviewers. I just managed to get through it, and most of the way felt like a long hike, carrying a heavy pack, braving bad weather. Dreary, tedious, unrewarding, unedifying, dull, and unconvincing. As for those who wrote that Mr Hansen writes well, I will point out that the word madame, when used in English (which is rarely the case, and more or less unexplained here), does not normally take the definite article. "The madame" this, and "The madame" that. Oy. On top of all the awkwardness, the evocation of Edwardian London was totally unconvincing. And none of the characters was even remotely alive. If you value your money, don't spend it on this. If you value your time, don't waste it on this.

Several reviewers here have covered the fine points of "Perlman's Ordeal", so I will just weigh in on the "it ain't "The Chess Garden" issue. It ain't. Like Pirsig's "Zen and the Art...", The Chess Garden invented a form which carried its message better than a traditional novel might have done. "Perlman's Ordeal" is not as inventive, but unlike Pirsig' "Lila", it is a first class novel anyway. I think I would have given it 5 stars if I hadn't had such high expectations of invention set by TCG. Now I'm ready for "Boone" to see what other pleasures Hansen has to offer.