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The Effects of Isolation on the Brain
There are many forms of isolation, and Ellie is becoming an expert on them: unloved and ignored as a child in Vienna, up against cultural barriers in Canada, holed up in a cabin in the north. What are the effects of isolation on the brain? Is it loneliness and boredom that makes Ellie take risks and say yes to Vera, her glamorous but deeply disturbed friend? Vera has been abused as a child and is now putting her trust in a charlatan healer. Together they entangle Ellie in a murderous game of fantasy and revenge. Marooned on the shores of a frozen lake, Ellie must make her way out of the Canadian bush and the wilderness of her own soul. It is a journey through hostile territory neglect, deceit, confusion, betrayal but Ellie is a fighter. All she needs to survive is a soulmate. Don't we all?"
- GenresFiction
136 pages, Paperback
Published August 30, 2016
8 people want to read
About the author
Erika Rummel
44 books23 followersErika Rummel has taught history at University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo. She divides her time between Toronto and Los Angeles and has lived in villages in Argentina, Romania, and Bulgaria. The author of more than a dozen books of non-fiction, she has written extensively on social history. She is also the author of two novels, Playing Naomi and Head Games. She was awarded the Random House Creative Writing Award, 2011, for an excerpt of The Effects of Isolation on the Brain.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 19, 2016
I rated The Effects of Isolation on the Brain 3/5 stars. I liked the story and I read it in an afternoon while on vacation.I particularly liked how Ms Rummel cleverly inserted small excerpts from authors and poets such as Byron, Coleridge, Keats and others. Ellie writes her story in diary-like fashion since she has little else to do in the cabin.
"So I write. Out of boredom, or maybe from a need to confess, or because the criminal in his lonely hour gives to his eyes a magnifying power. (Coleridge)"
As author Lee Gowan is quoted as saying on the back cover:
"Take a few minutes from your busy day and find a quiet place to read Erika Rummel’s The Effects of Isolation on the Brain. You won’t regret it.”
Very true, I didn't regret it for the story held my interest to see what exactly would happen to Ellie. Would Vera come to her rescue as promised? How would she avoid arrest for a crime she thinks she and Vera committed? Put The Effects of Isolation on the Brain on your 'to read' list for the coming year.
"So I write. Out of boredom, or maybe from a need to confess, or because the criminal in his lonely hour gives to his eyes a magnifying power. (Coleridge)"
As author Lee Gowan is quoted as saying on the back cover:
"Take a few minutes from your busy day and find a quiet place to read Erika Rummel’s The Effects of Isolation on the Brain. You won’t regret it.”
Very true, I didn't regret it for the story held my interest to see what exactly would happen to Ellie. Would Vera come to her rescue as promised? How would she avoid arrest for a crime she thinks she and Vera committed? Put The Effects of Isolation on the Brain on your 'to read' list for the coming year.
July 17, 2020
In “The Effects of Isolation on the Brain”, Erika Rummel skillfully unpacks one Matryoshka doll after another without respect for size or draws you into the confidence of the shell-game, tricking you into making one wrong guess after another. Perhaps she does both at once given that she continually managed to catch me off-guard, forcing me to smile at my own gullibility.
On finishing the novel, I was compelled to re-read it to try to spot how and where I had been intentionally – and pleasurably – misled.
Erika Rummel’s novel purports to be about Ellie, her neglected childhood in Vienna immediately after World War II, about her heartache in a dysfunctional family. Her father, Peter, runs away with the young Canadian neighbour, Vera. Her mother remarries. Neither have time nor space for Ellie. But that was in 1947, now it’s 1961 and Ellie is unaccountably hiding out in a cottage on the wintry shores of a Northern Ontario lake.
How did she get there? Why is she hiding? What has happened to her father and mother, to Vera? Are Ellie’s reflections back and forth in time and place a search for a deeper understanding of her life or something more sinister? If these memories and reflections are neither a source of pleasure nor distress then what are they and what purpose do they serve this enigmatic young woman?
In scant increments Erika Rummel hints at potential answers. Those sketchy hints slowly expand the narrative until you think you ‘have’ it and then, with a fast move, the author causes you to lose certainty and grope once more.
This remarkably cleverly-plotted and well-written novel with its twists and turns, its beautiful phrases that capture insights reinforced by lines from the Romantic poets that we instantaneously recognise as wisdom, will engage you on every level until the last, mysterious quote from Byron: ‘For the sword outwears its sheath...’
On reflection, The Effects of Isolation on the Brain may be more about us readers, than we are prepared to admit.
On finishing the novel, I was compelled to re-read it to try to spot how and where I had been intentionally – and pleasurably – misled.
Erika Rummel’s novel purports to be about Ellie, her neglected childhood in Vienna immediately after World War II, about her heartache in a dysfunctional family. Her father, Peter, runs away with the young Canadian neighbour, Vera. Her mother remarries. Neither have time nor space for Ellie. But that was in 1947, now it’s 1961 and Ellie is unaccountably hiding out in a cottage on the wintry shores of a Northern Ontario lake.
How did she get there? Why is she hiding? What has happened to her father and mother, to Vera? Are Ellie’s reflections back and forth in time and place a search for a deeper understanding of her life or something more sinister? If these memories and reflections are neither a source of pleasure nor distress then what are they and what purpose do they serve this enigmatic young woman?
In scant increments Erika Rummel hints at potential answers. Those sketchy hints slowly expand the narrative until you think you ‘have’ it and then, with a fast move, the author causes you to lose certainty and grope once more.
This remarkably cleverly-plotted and well-written novel with its twists and turns, its beautiful phrases that capture insights reinforced by lines from the Romantic poets that we instantaneously recognise as wisdom, will engage you on every level until the last, mysterious quote from Byron: ‘For the sword outwears its sheath...’
On reflection, The Effects of Isolation on the Brain may be more about us readers, than we are prepared to admit.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews