Double-blind

by Michelle Butler Hallett

The likely failed protection of one little girl: what was it worth?After his brothers death from polio in 1946, Josh Bozeman deliberately collapses his emotions and capacity for empathy. As a psychiatrist working under MK-Ultra in Newfoundland in the 1970s, Dr. Bozeman struggles with his patients illnesses, his assignments, his desires and his conscience. An unexpected and apparently paranormal connection with a former patient and subject in 2003 draws him back to Newfoundland and to a chance of redemption.

173 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2007

About the author

Author's surname is Butler Hallett, not Hallett.
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Michelle Butler Hallett, she/her, writes fiction about violence, evil, love and grace. Author of the novels Constant Nobody, This Marlowe, deluded your sailors, Sky Waves and Double-blind, and the short story collection The shadow side of grace. Her short stories are widely anthologized in Hard Ol' Spot, The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, Everything Is So Political, Running the Whale's Back, and Best American Mystery Stories 2014 . Michelle Butler Hallett lives in St. John's.
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Butler Hallett's work, at once striking, memorable and difficult to categorize, wrestles with themes of power, evil, complicity, illness, identity, hope, love, and grace.

2016's This Marlowe wrestles with the agonies of faith, duty, and love against a setting of religious and political turmoil, quotidian surveillance, widespread fear for security of one's country, questions of how to help an influx of refugees, the weight of the body politic, and the state of the soul. The Miramichi Reader calls This Marlowe "a masterful work of historical fiction," adding that the novel "assuredly has all the intrigue of a modern spy thriller." The Toronto Star notes "Butler Hallett's prose is at once canny and tender ... perfectly paced and gracefully wrought, This Marlowe is superior historical fare," while Quill & Quire remarked "Complex, lyrical, and with a profound sense of a world long passed and humanity’s eternal motivations, This Marlowe holds up extremely well next to the most lauded recent historical fiction."

Butler Hallett's 2011 novel, deluded your sailors, follows characters in early eighteenth-century England and colonies, as well as in a republic of Newfoundland and Labrador in 2009. Linked to her 2008 novel, Sky Waves, deluded your sailors stares down abuse, identity and friendship in a startling story of violence, loss and love.

In Sky Waves, Butler Hallett draws on her radio background and her troubled relationship with history to create an ambitious work. Described by the author as "a demented 'aural' culture novel," Sky Waves is told as a drew, that is, as the ninety-eight meshes in a row of a fishing net. Characters and storylines are networked together, almost as a mural against a timeline of 1901 to 2005. The Maple Tree Literary Supplement called the novel "a dynamic and shape-shifting work that redefines the project of storytelling, which complicates oral/aural tradition."

Double-blind, which was shortlisted for the 2008 Sunburst Award.The Sunburst jury said "Sanity, madness, torture in the name of science -- Double-blind is wonderfully original while chillingly based in history... The writing is incredibly layered, with metaphor and symbol perfectly balanced against the hard neutrality of scientific language."

Of the story collection The shadow side of grace, The Globe and Mail notes "demons are at work - the kind that lurk in the subconscious and surface, depending on the individual, as either despairing visions or acts of outright brutality... Butler Hallett seems often to be creating from a subliminal place, riding on intuition, unencumbered by the counsel of editors."

Reviews

[Lee Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this tightly constructed, visceral novel, a work that's been labelled sci fi by some but is more literary psychological suspense (not that categories matter). Plot elements (the study of, and apparent discovery of telepathy, or 'reachers' as they're called in the novel, who are studied for their potential as Cold War weapons) could certainly have steered the novel in a purely science fiction direction, but that's not the author's desire; her goals are bigger than this. Entertainment be damned, she has bigger fish to fry. (Which is not to say the book isn't entertaining. It's gripping and there's ambition in the lean prose. The humour is wry, cynical, subtle. And the book makes you think. It's well-researched, inventive when it needs to be.)

I can love a book solely for it's approach to narrative, its style. In Double-Blind, Butler Hallett works hard to keep the experience true, to immerse the reader in her world without resorting to easy explanations and guidance. Events happen as you would experience them. Too few writers write this way (especially in Atlantic Canada) and it shows a tremendous respect for the reader. Do the work and be rewarded.

There are not a lot of moments of light in Double-Blind, it's all dark corners and shadows. Thing are often only half seen. Dialogue is clipped, tense, and little time is spent on scenery (yet setting comes across wonderfully). Dr Josh Bozeman is a memorable, conflicted character, skillfully created, fully human, and the novel races along, artfully handling large progressions of time and development of character.

Recommended for readers who don't want the same ol' same ol', who don't want a pigtailed redhead skipping off into the sunset, who think there can be more from this region than quaint, huggable stories.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I reviewed Michelle Butler Hallett's first novel, which came out after her collection of short stories, The shadow side of grace, for Amazon.ca. She's a writer with a good future. Check her out.

[Sandra Bunting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chilling story set in Newfoundland in a children's psychiatric facility, highlighting how ambition can cause the disregard of human life. Absolutely chilling.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heard of the MK Ultra project? Neither had I until I read an interview with the author about 'Double-blind'. The discordant, sometimes confusing style of this book chimes perfectly with its subject - using vulnerable, disturbed children to conduct experiments into brainwashing. The main protagonist, Dr Bozeman, a military psychiatrist recruited to the project, endeavours to follow orders in a humane manner, unlike his colleague Fraser. Yet he never seems to question that what they're doing might be wrong. An intriguing story.

[David]

I know I'm biased, being married to the author and all, but the work continues to grow and impress anyway.