Games of the Blind

by Evelin Sullivan

Paul Avery is in prison for murder, and he sets out to tell how he was brought to commit his crime. His memoir - self-absorbed and tormented, wry and comical - focuses on his disastrous romantic adventures which led to their grim culmination. It is a story of intense passion and humiliation, love and indifference, desire and cruelty, of the attempt to reach out yet hopelessly finding only oneself. Fourteen-year-old Paul is mortally wounded by his first love, a married woman. He becomes an orphan who, at 16, brutally abuses, both emotionally and sexually, his cousin. Eventually he turns into a psychologist who commits the ultimate professional sin: he falls in love with one of his patients - and acts on it. With a mix of wit and pathos that amuses as much as shocks the reader, Games of the Blind looks straight into the hearts of those of us who think we are ruled by true passion when all we can really see is the prison walls of our selves.

297 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

Born 1947.

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

1st person pov ; monologue
All about mad love
More lit-fic than maddeningly something altogether different
Protag is a shrink
so, didn't really work for me.

But ::
A depraved monster of a protag with which you ought not identify
Jailhouse confessional
(for both of which, cf, Lolita and Defiance, to which it pales)
those are the pluses.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Or should I make my way upstairs on tiptoes and surprise Passatour sweating on his cross-country-skiing contraption or voiding his bowels while reading the Washington Post?"

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very well written, mighty entertaining, although probably not for the squeamish.