OTHER SIDE OF YOU

by Salley Vickers

Book Overview

"For psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr. David McBride, death exerts an unusual draw. Despite his profession, he has never come to terms with the violent accident that took his brother's life, a trauma... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0007165455
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.8" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

Insightful

An insightful, sad and heart wrenching tale of love, found and lost. The characters come to life on the pages. The conversations are incredibly deep. The artistic study of Caravaggio is both beautiful and informative. A quiet book for introspection and thought.

The Other Side of You Psychological Yarn

This was a very short but not simple novel that explores infidelity and its effect on its main characters. This is a book that looks at psychiatrist's slow examination of his patient and his own life. The author interweaves the two stories in a unique believable way. The book speaks to interconnectedness and the importance of it in solving complex human issues. Not a shout out loud book but a very subtle whisper of a good book.

Poignant

Psychiatrist Dr.David McBride meets a new patient, a would be suicide, Elizabeth Cruickshank who was saved from death by a neighbour. Elizabeth had married on the rebound from her first real love affair, only to find herself trapped in a boring marriage to an extremely dull man. Years later and now the mother of two, she meets her old lover again and travels with him to Rome where he introduces her to the world of art, in particular that of Caravaggio. Despite desperately wanting to be with him, she leaves her lover because of her guilty conscience and regrets it, ever after, when he dies only days later. Treating Elizabeth awakens old feelings in David who had always put to the back of his mind, the fact that his brother died as a child while caring for him. Salley Vickery writes knowledgeably (she is a psychoanalyst) and with great clarity and is one of those authors who can make the reader hear every word of a conversation. I can't swear that I understood every nuance of the psychiatric side of things but enjoyed the read immensely.

Insightful, yet sad (4.5 *s)

This book is a very thoughtful yet sobering look at the difficulty of establishing a relationship where the two parties actually fit. The author explores this through the voices of psychoanalyst David McBride and patient Elizabeth Cruikshank, who had attempted suicide when her chance at realizing true love with artist and teacher Thomas Carrington is abruptly ended. The story is initiated in David's office as he and Liz, after a very halting start, attempt to understand Liz' history with Thomas. Liz in a harsh judgment of herself regards her actions as "faithless," altogether different than unfaithful. Along this journey of discovery, the author's assessment of the possibilities for love is made rather clear. For example, "The reasons for choice of partner are obscure and what passes for love is generally a decided mixed bag: lust, anxiety, lack of self-worth, sadism, masochism, cowardice, fear, recklessness, self-glory, simple brutality, the need to control, the urge to be looked after; most dangerous of all, the desire to save. ... Seldom, very seldom, do two people unite through sheer reciprocal joy in the other's being." Even then, there is "the stark fact that nothing is ever settled between two human souls, for nothing is or can be settled until we are finally done and gone." Though there is a certain amount of desperation in their lives and some developments are rather somber, both David and Elizabeth come to some realizations and understandings that permit them to move on with their lives with some contentment gained. The book is not without its ambiguities and unevenness, especially in regards to the one tragic event in David's life, namely the death of his six-year-old brother when he was himself only five. The conversations are long but there is enough plot to keep the book moving. The insights gained from the book outweigh the general melancholy tone.

Haunting and poignant

Dr David McBride is a psychiatrist, whose life has been marked by death, leaving him to professionally specialise in the field of suicide. His patient, Elizabeth Cruikshank, has attempted suicide - not an attention seeking effort but a genuine one, foiled only by the timely arrival of a neighbour. This seems an unlikely pairing for Sally Vickers' latest effort (after the beautiful "Miss Garnet's Angel" and the less effective "Mr Golighlty's Holiday"), but it has worked magnificently, giving us a spare, thoughtfully crafted and many layered novel which says as much about modern psychiatric medicine as it does about our ability to heal each other through remembrance and simple human interaction. It is also, at many levels, a finely woven and poignant love story. Interwoven in this story is an appreciation of Caravaggio's works (which makes you want to look at them, be warned), his ability to record the spectrum of human emotions in vivid paint, and how both patient and doctor have been touched by his masterpieces in ways that they could not foresee would have such impacts on their respective psyches. The writing is sharp and clean, and each of the characters are finely drawn and believable. The small grouping of attendant characters - other patients, staff, family and friends are also interesting and believable, adding richness to this novel by allowing us to see that there are other factors which impact upon who our chief characters are, and how they are formed by their world. Sally Vickers is a talented novelist whose passion for her topic and their humanity shines through every page of this fine book.