Perlman's Ordeal

New York Times Notable Book of the Year

One evening in London in 1906, Dr. August Perlman--classical music lover, hashish devotee, and a scrupulously scientific pioneer of "clinical suggestion" (or hypnotism)--is about to leave for the symphony when a hysterical teenage girl is brought into his office. It seems that another girl's personality is living inside her. Eventually, in a time just before the age of Freud, a charismatic imposter (Madame Barrett, a "spiritualist") and the pioneering doctor must fight a heated battle over this teenager's soul. This novel, as The New York Times Book Review so aptly put it, is "extravagantly, even bewilderingly inventive . . . [and] crammed with the stuff of dreams."