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Case Study
“I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger.”
London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character.
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents these notebooks interspersed with his own biographical research into Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling – and often wickedly humorous – meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.
London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character.
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents these notebooks interspersed with his own biographical research into Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling – and often wickedly humorous – meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.
278 pages, Hardcover
First published October 7, 2021
755 people are currently reading
26065 people want to read
About the author
Graeme Macrae Burnet
9 books870 followersGraeme Macrae Burnet was born in Kilmarnock in 1967. He studied English Literature at Glasgow University before spending some years teaching in France, the Czech Republic and Portugal. He then took an M.Litt in International Security Studies at St Andrews University and fell into a series of jobs in television. These days he lives in Glasgow.
He has been writing since he was a teenager. His first book, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau (2014), is a literary crime novel set in a small town in France. His second novel, His Bloody Project (2015), revolves around the murder of a village birleyman in nineteenth century Wester Ross. He likes Georges Simenon, the films of Michael Haneke and black pudding.
He has been writing since he was a teenager. His first book, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau (2014), is a literary crime novel set in a small town in France. His second novel, His Bloody Project (2015), revolves around the murder of a village birleyman in nineteenth century Wester Ross. He likes Georges Simenon, the films of Michael Haneke and black pudding.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,636 reviews
August 17, 2022
3.5* rounded up
Longlisted for Booker prize 2022
I became acquainted with Graeme Macrae Burnet when he was shortlisted for the Booker prize with his novel His Bloody Project. I enjoyed the writing style and structure of that book so I was looking forward to reading Case Study. I also enjoyed it but I thought the 1st to be better.
In the first pages of Case Study, we are told that GMB (see what the author did here?) receives some mysterious notebooks, which are said to have been written by a woman who believed that her counsellor Collin Braithwaite drove her sister to suicide. GMB does not receive those papers by chance. He is known to have studied the infamous man. Although he questions the authenticity of the documents, GMB decides to publish them together with the biography of Collins Braithwaite. The book alternates between the notebooks and biography notes written by GMB. The woman decides to investigate the circumstances of her sister suicide so she becomes a “patient” of Braithwaite under the pseudonym Rebecca Smyth. She uses the notebooks to documents her investigation and experiences. She tries to invent a personality that would make her an interesting patient and that will lead to some unexpected developments. In the biographic passages, Braithwaite is painted as a brilliant, egotistic and manipulative man. A member of the anti-psychiatry movement, he holds the opinion that a person can have more than one self. He is very aggressive in his opinions despite not having any psychiatric studies.
The novel is set during the 60’ and although there were some specific elements of that period, I did not feel transported there. His Bloody Project transmitted a more accurate sense of space and time.
Case study has the appearance of a non-fiction book, it made me want to google the name of Collin Braithwaite although I knew everything came from Burnet’s imagination. It also reads as a thriller of sorts, although the tension fizzles out in the end. I agree with the other’s redaer praises and critics. I hope it gets shortlisted although I do not see this as a winner.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Serena Manteghi and Graeme Rooney. I loved Rooney’s Scotish accent and Manteghi gave an appropriate voice to Rebecca.
Review of His Bloody Project
Longlisted for Booker prize 2022
I became acquainted with Graeme Macrae Burnet when he was shortlisted for the Booker prize with his novel His Bloody Project. I enjoyed the writing style and structure of that book so I was looking forward to reading Case Study. I also enjoyed it but I thought the 1st to be better.
In the first pages of Case Study, we are told that GMB (see what the author did here?) receives some mysterious notebooks, which are said to have been written by a woman who believed that her counsellor Collin Braithwaite drove her sister to suicide. GMB does not receive those papers by chance. He is known to have studied the infamous man. Although he questions the authenticity of the documents, GMB decides to publish them together with the biography of Collins Braithwaite. The book alternates between the notebooks and biography notes written by GMB. The woman decides to investigate the circumstances of her sister suicide so she becomes a “patient” of Braithwaite under the pseudonym Rebecca Smyth. She uses the notebooks to documents her investigation and experiences. She tries to invent a personality that would make her an interesting patient and that will lead to some unexpected developments. In the biographic passages, Braithwaite is painted as a brilliant, egotistic and manipulative man. A member of the anti-psychiatry movement, he holds the opinion that a person can have more than one self. He is very aggressive in his opinions despite not having any psychiatric studies.
The novel is set during the 60’ and although there were some specific elements of that period, I did not feel transported there. His Bloody Project transmitted a more accurate sense of space and time.
Case study has the appearance of a non-fiction book, it made me want to google the name of Collin Braithwaite although I knew everything came from Burnet’s imagination. It also reads as a thriller of sorts, although the tension fizzles out in the end. I agree with the other’s redaer praises and critics. I hope it gets shortlisted although I do not see this as a winner.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Serena Manteghi and Graeme Rooney. I loved Rooney’s Scotish accent and Manteghi gave an appropriate voice to Rebecca.
Review of His Bloody Project
August 15, 2022
Case Study is a book where very little is as it appears to be on the surface. Set in a subtly camp rendition of the 1960s, the story nominally follows a woman who begins sessions with discredited psychotherapist Collins Braithwaite, initially as a means of unraveling the death of her sister. Most of this is told as a story within a story - or more accurately, a recovered journal/notebook within a story - which is all framed as a novel by the fictional "GMB" - who happens to share the initials of the actual author Graeme Macrae Burnet. If there are multiple layers to the characters, there are multiple ways to read this book. On one level, it taps into the concept of Caledonian antisyzgy, a recurring thread in Scottish literature, which explores dueling polarities and a reconciliation of contradictory ideas. It is certainly this, but where Case Study shines is as a subtle queering of that concept, exploring ways in which characters wear masks as a means of identity and survival. This is sign posted in the brief encounter between Braithwaite and Dirk Brogarde, but it is also layered throughout the narrative. Stylistically, there is a profusion of camp sensibility, not just in the setting but also in the nuanced fixation on details and a subtext of queer desire. For readers who aren't keyed into this, Case Study can be a bit of a slog in places, mired in its own cleverness, but I was entertained throughout and very much enjoyed this provocatively queer entry on the Booker longlist.
September 9, 2022
11th in my 2022 Booker Prize longlist rankings - my Bookstagram rating, ranking, summary review and Book themed Golden Retriever photo is here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CheM3eVML...
It is by one of three authors previously shortlisted for the prize – the others being Karen Joy Fowler and NoViolet Bulawayo. Macrae Burnet – a Scottish writer – was shortlisted in 2016 for “His Bloody Project”.
That latter was a pastiche novel about what is claimed to be a real-life set of murders (in a remote highlands croft in the mid-1800s). Its central novelistic conceit was of the author (noted as GMB) reviewing a series of historical documents and then compiling them into a modern-day non-fiction book. The novel includes the extracts of the journal of the prison surgeon/psychiatrist/criminologist whose role was to assess the sanity of the accused and whether he was fit to stand trial as well as a supposed memoir of disputed authenticity.
Many of these themes carry over into this book – the pastiche, the accusations of murder (albeit a little more tangentially), psychiatry (by contrast much more central here), the author as GMB compiling historical documents into a non-fiction novel, disputed authenticity.
(Note that the author’s other two novels have both a crime and meta-fictional nature – with GMB purporting to be the translator of novels by an obscure French crime writer)
It is also easy to see why this book appealed to this year’s judges – as they seem to have a liking for the pastiche and for books which play around with the concept of fiction itself – most noticeably with “Trust”. In that book in particular I think that the judges are perhaps over-influenced by the nature of the book rather than by its successful execution – a literal and literary prioritisation of form over substance (“Glory” would to be another example where the concept is better than the execution).
The novel’s origins began with a post the author made to his own website (and also posted to Goodreads)
https://graememacraeburnet.com/tag/ar...
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
in which he talks about his fascination with psychiatric case studies which began with Robert Lindner’s seminal “The Fifty-Minute Hour” (T) and then talks about two more obscure books he discovered in Glasgow’s chaotic Voltaire & Rousseau bookshop (T): Ways to Psychic Health (1944) by Alphonse Maeder (T) and Untherapy (1965) by A. Collins Braithwaite (F).
We are told that Braithwaite was influenced heavily by RD Laing, often seen as leader of the “anti-psychiatry” movement and his book “Divided Self” (T) and that:
In the Preface to the book GMB, writing in April 2021, tells us how based on this blog post, he was approached by a “Mr Martin Grey” (an admitted pseudonym) of Clacton-on-Sea with a series of notebooks written by his cousin which he thinks GMB might want to turn into a book as they contain allegations about Braithwaite.
As GMB is currently working through an “archive” of materials about Braithwaite (little to be found on the internet he resorts to paper) he has been contemplating a biography but found little interest from his ageng and publisher in the tale of a “forgotten and disgraced character whose work had been out of print for decades”.
Reading the notebooks – which he on balance believes to be contemporary and genuine although noting clear mistakes – he decides to publish them interwoven with his own biography of Braithwaite.
The notebooks are by an unnamed woman whose sister Veronica committed suicide two years before she wrote the book – she believes due to her consulations with Braithwaite, something she only realises after reading a copy of “Untherapy” and realising the penultimate case study is about a lightly fictionalised Veronica (a case study included in her notebook from a ripped out First Edition of the book) before then reading its controversial predecessor “Kill Your Self”.
The woman decides to find out more about Braithwaite but not in her current virginal persona (unlike he adventurous and intellectually brilliant late Sister, she prefers the company of her widowed father – her mother having died in odd circumstances – and staying largely at home, albeit her imagination is feverish) – and so adopts an alternative persona of Rebecca Smyth, a sexually-confident habituee of the theatrical scene but struggling with a maladie.
Braithwaite we learn is something of an enfant terrible but one struggling for a direction. But then influenced by and interacting with the angry young men scene (for example having a confrontation with Colin Wilson – author of “The Outsider” (T)), he reinvents himself (a very common theme in the book) and becoming the centre of a group at Oxford where he is famed for his unrestrained sexual advances, courting a woman who rejects his crude advances by pretending to be someone else writing to criticise Braithwaite (again note the common themes) before growing to fame with “Kill Your Self” (F)
He then establishes tentative consulting practice and then becoming a successful therapist after Dick Bogarde (T) took his advice and recommend him to friends (one of Braithwaite’s contentions is that both actors and homosexuals have to be used to playing different roles), taking increasing sexual liberties with his clients before later suffering from a major scandal due to his involvement with a famous actress Jane Gressingham (F).
The author of the notebooks ranges first over her back story (we learn for example of a diary she kept for 2 years which she faked so as to reassure her mother – faked accounts are of course a key theme) and we quickly gather that she is both an unreliable narrator and rather self-deluded.
If anything her sections seem a little too naive. The author has in interviews said he read copious copies of the “Women’s Journal” (T) to understand “the language and attitudes of the time” but whether that is a great source I am less clear. However the author does get around this by the narrator making it clear she is very influenced by that same journal and wishes to be regularly published there which then implies she might aspire to the same style for her notebooks and of course fits a book about adopting identities.
She is rather exaggeratedly adrift of the swinging sixties and so increasingly relies on the persona of Rebecca to enable her to function out of her comfort zone. She becomes slightly obsessed with another of Braithwaite’s clients (the glamorous Susanna Kepler) and Braithwaite himself – and increasingly over time Rebecca takes her over, most amusingly in a scene where the two openly argue in front of a man that Rebecca is trying to seduce.
The book ends with a “Postscript to the Second Edition” in which GMB outlines the correspondence he received after Autumn 2021 publication claiming various errors in the notebooks (the acknowledgements end “Finally, my sincere thanks to David Holmes for invaluable legal advice. Any errors in the sections on Collins Braithwaite are entirely down to me. As to the remainder of the text, any inaccuracies beyond those already noted are the responsibility of the author of the notebooks.”) and how concerned to verify the authenticity of the notebooks finally arranges to meet the person who sent them to him.
Overall I found this a much better executed pastiche than “Trust” albeit the book was far from my favourite on the longlist because I am not sure it really followed through on its promise. Both sections are initially very entertaining and the reader is also intrigued where each of them will go and how they will converge …. and the answer to all three questions appears a little underwhelming.
Compared to “His Bloody Project” I think many readers will be far less interested in the rather deluded sixties-scene compared to an 1800s Highland croft – and we do end up reading for most of the book about a rather obnoxious man, filtered for half the book through the eyes of a rather odd woman. Nevertheless this was an enjoyable read while not one that I think merits a shortlist place (particularly given the author’s previous recognition).
3.5 stars
It is by one of three authors previously shortlisted for the prize – the others being Karen Joy Fowler and NoViolet Bulawayo. Macrae Burnet – a Scottish writer – was shortlisted in 2016 for “His Bloody Project”.
That latter was a pastiche novel about what is claimed to be a real-life set of murders (in a remote highlands croft in the mid-1800s). Its central novelistic conceit was of the author (noted as GMB) reviewing a series of historical documents and then compiling them into a modern-day non-fiction book. The novel includes the extracts of the journal of the prison surgeon/psychiatrist/criminologist whose role was to assess the sanity of the accused and whether he was fit to stand trial as well as a supposed memoir of disputed authenticity.
Many of these themes carry over into this book – the pastiche, the accusations of murder (albeit a little more tangentially), psychiatry (by contrast much more central here), the author as GMB compiling historical documents into a non-fiction novel, disputed authenticity.
(Note that the author’s other two novels have both a crime and meta-fictional nature – with GMB purporting to be the translator of novels by an obscure French crime writer)
It is also easy to see why this book appealed to this year’s judges – as they seem to have a liking for the pastiche and for books which play around with the concept of fiction itself – most noticeably with “Trust”. In that book in particular I think that the judges are perhaps over-influenced by the nature of the book rather than by its successful execution – a literal and literary prioritisation of form over substance (“Glory” would to be another example where the concept is better than the execution).
The novel’s origins began with a post the author made to his own website (and also posted to Goodreads)
https://graememacraeburnet.com/tag/ar...
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
in which he talks about his fascination with psychiatric case studies which began with Robert Lindner’s seminal “The Fifty-Minute Hour” (T) and then talks about two more obscure books he discovered in Glasgow’s chaotic Voltaire & Rousseau bookshop (T): Ways to Psychic Health (1944) by Alphonse Maeder (T) and Untherapy (1965) by A. Collins Braithwaite (F).
We are told that Braithwaite was influenced heavily by RD Laing, often seen as leader of the “anti-psychiatry” movement and his book “Divided Self” (T) and that:
Braithwaite was born in Darlington in 1925 and, from the scant information available, appears to have had a brief period of celebrity in the mid-1960s
If there is a recurring theme through the cases he presents though, it is that his clients are traumatised not by their eccentricities themselves, but by the stress of concealing them; of being forced to present different personae to different audiences. Braithwaite’s remedy is to embrace the idea of ‘being several’ (a phrase he uses repeatedly): to give up the idea that one persona is any ‘truer’ than any of the others. Once one has thrown off the idea of a ‘hierarchy of selves’ one can happily be whoever one wants, whenever ones wants.
Subjecting oneself to therapy from Braithwaite must have been terrifying. Reading about it is tremendously entertaining.
In the Preface to the book GMB, writing in April 2021, tells us how based on this blog post, he was approached by a “Mr Martin Grey” (an admitted pseudonym) of Clacton-on-Sea with a series of notebooks written by his cousin which he thinks GMB might want to turn into a book as they contain allegations about Braithwaite.
As GMB is currently working through an “archive” of materials about Braithwaite (little to be found on the internet he resorts to paper) he has been contemplating a biography but found little interest from his ageng and publisher in the tale of a “forgotten and disgraced character whose work had been out of print for decades”.
Reading the notebooks – which he on balance believes to be contemporary and genuine although noting clear mistakes – he decides to publish them interwoven with his own biography of Braithwaite.
The notebooks are by an unnamed woman whose sister Veronica committed suicide two years before she wrote the book – she believes due to her consulations with Braithwaite, something she only realises after reading a copy of “Untherapy” and realising the penultimate case study is about a lightly fictionalised Veronica (a case study included in her notebook from a ripped out First Edition of the book) before then reading its controversial predecessor “Kill Your Self”.
The woman decides to find out more about Braithwaite but not in her current virginal persona (unlike he adventurous and intellectually brilliant late Sister, she prefers the company of her widowed father – her mother having died in odd circumstances – and staying largely at home, albeit her imagination is feverish) – and so adopts an alternative persona of Rebecca Smyth, a sexually-confident habituee of the theatrical scene but struggling with a maladie.
Braithwaite we learn is something of an enfant terrible but one struggling for a direction. But then influenced by and interacting with the angry young men scene (for example having a confrontation with Colin Wilson – author of “The Outsider” (T)), he reinvents himself (a very common theme in the book) and becoming the centre of a group at Oxford where he is famed for his unrestrained sexual advances, courting a woman who rejects his crude advances by pretending to be someone else writing to criticise Braithwaite (again note the common themes) before growing to fame with “Kill Your Self” (F)
He describes this new way of being as ‘schizophrening’. As the decade wore on, this would become an idea perfectly in tune with the be-whoever-you-want-to-be mood of the time, and copies of Kill Your Self would be soon found in the back pocket of every student and bar-room philosopher. ‘Phrening’ (or sometimes ‘phreening’) passed into beatnik argot, and the slogans ‘Don’t be yourself: phree yourself!’ or the more succinct ‘Don’t be: phree!’ were graffitied on the walls of university campuses up and down the land. The concept also gave rise to the short-lived Phree Verse movement in which often acid-fuelled performers channelled their various selves into a spiralling cacophony, until the different personae melded into one incomprehensible but ‘authentic’ stream of consciousness. Ironically, more than one participant in these happenings would later find themselves recovering in psychiatric facilities.
He then establishes tentative consulting practice and then becoming a successful therapist after Dick Bogarde (T) took his advice and recommend him to friends (one of Braithwaite’s contentions is that both actors and homosexuals have to be used to playing different roles), taking increasing sexual liberties with his clients before later suffering from a major scandal due to his involvement with a famous actress Jane Gressingham (F).
The author of the notebooks ranges first over her back story (we learn for example of a diary she kept for 2 years which she faked so as to reassure her mother – faked accounts are of course a key theme) and we quickly gather that she is both an unreliable narrator and rather self-deluded.
If anything her sections seem a little too naive. The author has in interviews said he read copious copies of the “Women’s Journal” (T) to understand “the language and attitudes of the time” but whether that is a great source I am less clear. However the author does get around this by the narrator making it clear she is very influenced by that same journal and wishes to be regularly published there which then implies she might aspire to the same style for her notebooks and of course fits a book about adopting identities.
She is rather exaggeratedly adrift of the swinging sixties and so increasingly relies on the persona of Rebecca to enable her to function out of her comfort zone. She becomes slightly obsessed with another of Braithwaite’s clients (the glamorous Susanna Kepler) and Braithwaite himself – and increasingly over time Rebecca takes her over, most amusingly in a scene where the two openly argue in front of a man that Rebecca is trying to seduce.
The book ends with a “Postscript to the Second Edition” in which GMB outlines the correspondence he received after Autumn 2021 publication claiming various errors in the notebooks (the acknowledgements end “Finally, my sincere thanks to David Holmes for invaluable legal advice. Any errors in the sections on Collins Braithwaite are entirely down to me. As to the remainder of the text, any inaccuracies beyond those already noted are the responsibility of the author of the notebooks.”) and how concerned to verify the authenticity of the notebooks finally arranges to meet the person who sent them to him.
Overall I found this a much better executed pastiche than “Trust” albeit the book was far from my favourite on the longlist because I am not sure it really followed through on its promise. Both sections are initially very entertaining and the reader is also intrigued where each of them will go and how they will converge …. and the answer to all three questions appears a little underwhelming.
Compared to “His Bloody Project” I think many readers will be far less interested in the rather deluded sixties-scene compared to an 1800s Highland croft – and we do end up reading for most of the book about a rather obnoxious man, filtered for half the book through the eyes of a rather odd woman. Nevertheless this was an enjoyable read while not one that I think merits a shortlist place (particularly given the author’s previous recognition).
3.5 stars
April 19, 2024
A story in a story, based on alleged notebooks and following a woman who thinks a psychiatrist contributed to the suicide of her sister. She however is herself far from psychological stable
There is no reason to believe that the therapist is saner than the patient
What unsympathetic main characters this book has, either thriving on conflict (Briathwaite) or class obsessed (our sister “Rebekka”). Personas and split personalities, compartmentalization, they all play a big role and the voice of both characters is well rendered, but I can’t say I really enjoyed reading this Bookerprize 2022 long-listed book much.
The premise of Case Study is an account of a fictional psychotherapist, based on notebooks, with the narrator a woman who thinks this Braithwaite contributed to the suicide of her sister.
Soon it becomes apparent that our main character is not mentally stable herself, with her adopting another persona to get into therapy, and using the persona to date with men as well. All this can't conceal that she is far from a sympathetic character:
Father says I have a talent for identifying other people their flaws
Sisterly jealousy definitely also plays a role, as does aversion to sex, and soon we find that our main character is kind of gaslighted by her therapist.
He himself also has abundant trauma, with Braithwaite's history told in interludes between sessions the main character has with him. He is an iconoclast (Whatever it is, I am against it), rising from a worker environment to a sensation. His bravado and callousness however ends up turning against him.
The book kind of fizzles out in my opinion, and I caught myself wondering what the point of Graeme Macrae Burnet was to add the pseudo historical elements, in my view it didn't really add anything after the initial novelty and wonder what is real or not. Definitely well written and reflective on what really is the core of an individual, but still not a wholely satisfying read for me.
Quotes:
You could not separate an individual from the environment they found themselves in or the people they interact with
The real truth lay not in what I wrote but in what I omitted
Certainly I cannot imagine anything more alarming than having my mouth near someone’s else their genitals
Its kind of the ultimate thing, innit, he said, to have a girl trying to top herself over you
I am aware this doesn’t reflect well on me
I wouldn’t worry, she said, we all pretend to be someone else
He had a flexible relationship to the truth
I have known from an early age that I am an unpleasant and spiteful person
Perhaps Tom was an ice cream that was meant to be licked
And being another person, I felt for the first time, I was myself
It is myself from which I tried and failed to escape
There is no reason to believe that the therapist is saner than the patient
What unsympathetic main characters this book has, either thriving on conflict (Briathwaite) or class obsessed (our sister “Rebekka”). Personas and split personalities, compartmentalization, they all play a big role and the voice of both characters is well rendered, but I can’t say I really enjoyed reading this Bookerprize 2022 long-listed book much.
The premise of Case Study is an account of a fictional psychotherapist, based on notebooks, with the narrator a woman who thinks this Braithwaite contributed to the suicide of her sister.
Soon it becomes apparent that our main character is not mentally stable herself, with her adopting another persona to get into therapy, and using the persona to date with men as well. All this can't conceal that she is far from a sympathetic character:
Father says I have a talent for identifying other people their flaws
Sisterly jealousy definitely also plays a role, as does aversion to sex, and soon we find that our main character is kind of gaslighted by her therapist.
He himself also has abundant trauma, with Braithwaite's history told in interludes between sessions the main character has with him. He is an iconoclast (Whatever it is, I am against it), rising from a worker environment to a sensation. His bravado and callousness however ends up turning against him.
The book kind of fizzles out in my opinion, and I caught myself wondering what the point of Graeme Macrae Burnet was to add the pseudo historical elements, in my view it didn't really add anything after the initial novelty and wonder what is real or not. Definitely well written and reflective on what really is the core of an individual, but still not a wholely satisfying read for me.
Quotes:
You could not separate an individual from the environment they found themselves in or the people they interact with
The real truth lay not in what I wrote but in what I omitted
Certainly I cannot imagine anything more alarming than having my mouth near someone’s else their genitals
Its kind of the ultimate thing, innit, he said, to have a girl trying to top herself over you
I am aware this doesn’t reflect well on me
I wouldn’t worry, she said, we all pretend to be someone else
He had a flexible relationship to the truth
I have known from an early age that I am an unpleasant and spiteful person
Perhaps Tom was an ice cream that was meant to be licked
And being another person, I felt for the first time, I was myself
It is myself from which I tried and failed to escape
August 3, 2022
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022
I'm all here for psychological riddles, and in this one, a certain "GMB" is sent several notebooks that are supposed to have been written by a woman who calls herself Rebecca Smyth and believes that her sister was driven to suicide by infamous 60's counselor Collins Braithwaite. The book consists of those notebooks, interspersed with the research GMB did on Braithwaite, a counterculture eccentric who sees himself as a genius psychiatrist (he is loosely modeled after the real R.D. Laing, one of the leaders of the anti-psychiatry movement, who also features as Braithwaite's nemesis in the novel). While Braithwaite is highly controversial, GMB also questions the authenticity of the notebooks right from the beginning...
The first 2/3 of this book are a real pageturner, the text lives off its three-dimensional, cleverly unsympathetic characters: Braithwaite is a manipulative, grandiose egotist, while Rebecca Smyth is a stuck-up, arrogant, upper-class daughter who tries to outwit Braithwaite by becoming his client in order to find out what he did to her sister. It's fast, fun, and compelling, it can be read as a mystery or as satire on the 60's or (anti-/un-)therapy. Per usual in a novel featuring psychiatry, the question looms who is actually nuts, and it's incredibly witty and fun.
Unfortunately, outside of the character of Braithwaite, the 60's in the UK are not successfully evoked: Those couple of references just don't do the trick. Worse though is the denouement at the end, as there is no proper ending that would correspond to the expectation that is built before. So the book is smart, the characters are great and the writing is entertaining, but the ending - oh no, Burnet, why?!
I'm all here for psychological riddles, and in this one, a certain "GMB" is sent several notebooks that are supposed to have been written by a woman who calls herself Rebecca Smyth and believes that her sister was driven to suicide by infamous 60's counselor Collins Braithwaite. The book consists of those notebooks, interspersed with the research GMB did on Braithwaite, a counterculture eccentric who sees himself as a genius psychiatrist (he is loosely modeled after the real R.D. Laing, one of the leaders of the anti-psychiatry movement, who also features as Braithwaite's nemesis in the novel). While Braithwaite is highly controversial, GMB also questions the authenticity of the notebooks right from the beginning...
The first 2/3 of this book are a real pageturner, the text lives off its three-dimensional, cleverly unsympathetic characters: Braithwaite is a manipulative, grandiose egotist, while Rebecca Smyth is a stuck-up, arrogant, upper-class daughter who tries to outwit Braithwaite by becoming his client in order to find out what he did to her sister. It's fast, fun, and compelling, it can be read as a mystery or as satire on the 60's or (anti-/un-)therapy. Per usual in a novel featuring psychiatry, the question looms who is actually nuts, and it's incredibly witty and fun.
Unfortunately, outside of the character of Braithwaite, the 60's in the UK are not successfully evoked: Those couple of references just don't do the trick. Worse though is the denouement at the end, as there is no proper ending that would correspond to the expectation that is built before. So the book is smart, the characters are great and the writing is entertaining, but the ending - oh no, Burnet, why?!
October 11, 2021
I think I was simply the wrong audience for this book. I didn’t like it at all. As best as I can make out the book is a blend of fact (the therapist A. Collins Braithwaite did exist and the book details his rather lurid life) and fiction in the form of 5 notebooks which make up the case study. If any of that is wrong I simply don’t care. There are other, more positive reviews, of the book and I would encourage you you read them.
The case study comes about as an unnamed narrator calling herself Rebecca Smyth starts seeing the therapist her sister, Veronica, was seeing 2 years ago and whom she blames for inciting her sister’s suicide. The point of that is unclear to me. The point of the book was unclear to me. The characters were all odious. Braithwaite was nothing but a pretentious twat, although he readily acknowledged that. Rebecca started to get confused about where her ‘self’ ended and Rebecca began. However I did not care about Rebecca or whoever she really was either as she came across as a pretentious twat as well.
This was supposedly set in the 1960s. I was around them, albeit very young but I really can’t remember people speaking like Rebecca or being so self absorbed. Maybe it was because I am a heathen Aussie but my memories of that era and into the 70s is of not giving a fig what people thought. We just did what we wanted and had a good time. I never spent long in front of a mirror obsessively examining my face and clothing, I was just anxious to get of the door and party, nobody gave a toss about appearances. It read as set at least a decade earlier. And maybe the author was trying to make some point that escapes me or he is not able to channel a young woman as well as he thinks. Oooh controversial!
Anyway I found it all very long-winded, boring and full of irrelevant details. Thanks to Netgalley and Text Publishing for the much appreciated arc which I reviewed voluntarily and honestly.
The case study comes about as an unnamed narrator calling herself Rebecca Smyth starts seeing the therapist her sister, Veronica, was seeing 2 years ago and whom she blames for inciting her sister’s suicide. The point of that is unclear to me. The point of the book was unclear to me. The characters were all odious. Braithwaite was nothing but a pretentious twat, although he readily acknowledged that. Rebecca started to get confused about where her ‘self’ ended and Rebecca began. However I did not care about Rebecca or whoever she really was either as she came across as a pretentious twat as well.
This was supposedly set in the 1960s. I was around them, albeit very young but I really can’t remember people speaking like Rebecca or being so self absorbed. Maybe it was because I am a heathen Aussie but my memories of that era and into the 70s is of not giving a fig what people thought. We just did what we wanted and had a good time. I never spent long in front of a mirror obsessively examining my face and clothing, I was just anxious to get of the door and party, nobody gave a toss about appearances. It read as set at least a decade earlier. And maybe the author was trying to make some point that escapes me or he is not able to channel a young woman as well as he thinks. Oooh controversial!
Anyway I found it all very long-winded, boring and full of irrelevant details. Thanks to Netgalley and Text Publishing for the much appreciated arc which I reviewed voluntarily and honestly.
May 26, 2022
El autor quiere jugar con el lector y este lector de dos metros ha entrado hasta el fondo en el juego que propone el autor.
Cuando en una novela el punto de vista se alterna entre dos personajes se corre el riesgo de que una cara de la moneda guste más que la otra. En este caso, me han gustado más los cuadernos de ella (personajazo), pero también era necesario conocer la historia personal de él para alcanzar una comprensión completa.
Caso clínico me ha gustado muchísimo. El uso del narrador poco fiable es magnífico y me ha hecho dudar de todo. El final es de esos que no se olvidan. Lo hemos leído en una LC organizada por La librería ambulante 📚❤ y podríamos haber estado varias horas comentando sobre las diferentes interpretaciones que la historia ofrece.
Cuando he llegado al punto final del epílogo tenía dos cosas claras:
🎯 Merece 5 estrellas en Goodreads.
🎯 Si tuviera varios yoes, jamás mataría a mi yo lector.
Cuando en una novela el punto de vista se alterna entre dos personajes se corre el riesgo de que una cara de la moneda guste más que la otra. En este caso, me han gustado más los cuadernos de ella (personajazo), pero también era necesario conocer la historia personal de él para alcanzar una comprensión completa.
Caso clínico me ha gustado muchísimo. El uso del narrador poco fiable es magnífico y me ha hecho dudar de todo. El final es de esos que no se olvidan. Lo hemos leído en una LC organizada por La librería ambulante 📚❤ y podríamos haber estado varias horas comentando sobre las diferentes interpretaciones que la historia ofrece.
Cuando he llegado al punto final del epílogo tenía dos cosas claras:
🎯 Merece 5 estrellas en Goodreads.
🎯 Si tuviera varios yoes, jamás mataría a mi yo lector.
August 1, 2022
Wow, that was a crazy, unstoppable ride! I am still feeling dizzy.
The first thing you notice in Case Study is the gripping thriller-like, undercover façade. You enter it and almost immediately discover there is much more. It is also a meditation on how multifaceted and complex we are, how eager to wear masks in order to deceive others and ourselves. Not accidentally the protagonist hears the song lyrics I’m a great pretender at some point. According to Graeme Macrae Burnet, we have a choice: being nothing or being several. This polyphony of human nature is deftly reflected in the structure of the book which combines a novel, a diary and a biography, and on a linguistic level also — the differences in the narrators’ styles are striking.
The way the author captured the zeitgeist of the sixties is remarkable. Another thing I enjoyed immensely was Burnet’s playful distance and his dark, biting humour which just hit the spot for me. I think the bleakness of the author's philosophical constatations would have been pretty unbearable without his hilarious irony. I loved all the literary allusions also. Besides books mentioned in Case Study straightforward, my intrusive associations were The Magus and Cassandra at the Wedding .
Is Case Study ambitious and original enough to win the Booker Prize? Not so sure but I am glad it made it to the longlist, otherwise I might not have heard of it. Just a little final warning: the female narrator's (no name on purpose here) voice is so highly addictive that getting it out of your head might be a challenge: I have just started another book with a supposedly brilliant, funny narrator and instead of enjoying her eloquence, I obsessively keep recalling the protagonist of Case Study.
Stefano Bonazzi, Undecided.
The first thing you notice in Case Study is the gripping thriller-like, undercover façade. You enter it and almost immediately discover there is much more. It is also a meditation on how multifaceted and complex we are, how eager to wear masks in order to deceive others and ourselves. Not accidentally the protagonist hears the song lyrics I’m a great pretender at some point. According to Graeme Macrae Burnet, we have a choice: being nothing or being several. This polyphony of human nature is deftly reflected in the structure of the book which combines a novel, a diary and a biography, and on a linguistic level also — the differences in the narrators’ styles are striking.
The way the author captured the zeitgeist of the sixties is remarkable. Another thing I enjoyed immensely was Burnet’s playful distance and his dark, biting humour which just hit the spot for me. I think the bleakness of the author's philosophical constatations would have been pretty unbearable without his hilarious irony. I loved all the literary allusions also. Besides books mentioned in Case Study straightforward, my intrusive associations were The Magus and Cassandra at the Wedding .
Is Case Study ambitious and original enough to win the Booker Prize? Not so sure but I am glad it made it to the longlist, otherwise I might not have heard of it. Just a little final warning: the female narrator's (no name on purpose here) voice is so highly addictive that getting it out of your head might be a challenge: I have just started another book with a supposedly brilliant, funny narrator and instead of enjoying her eloquence, I obsessively keep recalling the protagonist of Case Study.
Stefano Bonazzi, Undecided.
August 1, 2022
3.5, rounded down.
The third 2022 Booker Prize candidate for me to read, and like the other two, only merits a 3.5, rounded down. Although I much enjoyed Burnet's second (and Booker shortlisted) novel His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae, this one suffers from some of the same problems as his first book The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau - not half as clever as it thinks it is, a bit over-written and plodding in places, and a distinct lack of the distinctive period setting that made Project so entertaining; I'm sorry but merely name-checking Dirk Bogarde, John Osborne, etc. does not really cut it when evoking swinging 60's London - Tessa Hadley does a far superior job of that in her overlooked Free Love. The ending is also a mite disappointing - in the immortal words of Peggy Lee: 'Is that all there is?'
While the conceit of the book is fine, and the execution serviceable, it pains me that this and the other two candidates I've read so far got spots on the coveted longlist, when something like ...oh, let's say for example ... Young Mungo, a much better book, is left out in the cold.
The third 2022 Booker Prize candidate for me to read, and like the other two, only merits a 3.5, rounded down. Although I much enjoyed Burnet's second (and Booker shortlisted) novel His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae, this one suffers from some of the same problems as his first book The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau - not half as clever as it thinks it is, a bit over-written and plodding in places, and a distinct lack of the distinctive period setting that made Project so entertaining; I'm sorry but merely name-checking Dirk Bogarde, John Osborne, etc. does not really cut it when evoking swinging 60's London - Tessa Hadley does a far superior job of that in her overlooked Free Love. The ending is also a mite disappointing - in the immortal words of Peggy Lee: 'Is that all there is?'
While the conceit of the book is fine, and the execution serviceable, it pains me that this and the other two candidates I've read so far got spots on the coveted longlist, when something like ...oh, let's say for example ... Young Mungo, a much better book, is left out in the cold.
October 4, 2023
Nada es lo que parece. Ni esta novela - con hechuras de thriller clásico y sombras de Hitchcock - ni sus personajes, que nos desvelan capas y capas, con una narradora poco fiable que aumenta la confusión.
Yo lo empecé a leer como un libro de intriga esperando una resolución convencional y a ratos me resultó algo plano, junto con un final que me desconcertó. Pero conforme pasan los días voy encontrando nuevas capas de significado y me va gustando más, esa es la prueba clara de que la lectura me ha valido la pena.
Hoy, leyendo una de las reseñas (tantas buenas reseñas en GR, qué locura!) he descubierto el concepto Caledonian Antisyzygy, que viene a ser la dualidad y la lucha de opuestos en la literatura escocesa, cuyo ejemplo más conocido es El doctor Jekyll y mister Hyde de Robert Louis Stevenson. Y ciertamente este es unos de los temas principales del libro, la identidad y el yo, que en los años 60 adquieren tintes de obsesión social y dan lugar a corrientes como la antipsiquiatría y los gurús de todo tipo.
La trama principal son los diarios de una chica que sospecha que el suicidio de su hermana fue provocado por el peculiar terapeuta que la visitaba, A. Collins Braithwaite. Ella decide hacerse pasar por enferma para ir a su consulta a investigar lo sucedido. El autor intercala estos diarios, que le fueron enviados, con una especie de biografía documental de Braithwite, quien ejerce de terapeuta sin tener el título, simplemente subido a la ola desencadenada por personajes mediáticos como el psiquiatra escocés R. D. Laing. Al cuestionar el concepto mismo de enfermedad mental y admitir como normal las distintas identidades en lucha dentro de un individuo, Laing sacudió los cimientos de la psiquiatría de la época, presentando además al terapeuta como narrador poco fiable.
Me ha gustado mucho la protagonista, con una voz fresca y llena de sentido del humor, con sus dos personalidades en lucha, entre lo convencional y la liberación que traían los 'Swinging Sixties'.
Yo no era una Mujer Moderna e Independiente. Yo solo deseaba quedarme en casa, cuidando de mi papi, leyendo novelas y entreteniéndome delante del espejo de mi dormitorio. Maldije a Emmeline Pankhurst y a su pandilla de Jezabeles por haberlo estropeado todo.
El nombre que elige para su alma dual - Rebecca - nos remite a otro clásico literario, símbolo de la mujer que se enfrenta sola a la incertidumbre, tanto en su entorno como en su propia mente.
También me ha interesado la biografía de Braithwaite, donde aparecen personajes reales del ambientillo cultural del Londres de la época: los 'Angry young men' del teatro y el cine, los Beatles y muchos otros asoman la cabeza por allí y se apuntan temas como la represión sexual, la homosexualidad o las diferencias de clase.
En conjunto, una novela para leerla con calma, con la Wikipedia a mano y sin esperar giros espectaculares ni respuestas claras a los temas planteados.
'Si algo aprendí - escribe - es que por muchas comodidades materiales que le arrojes a un ser humano, siempre encontraremos algo que nos haga sentir miserables. Estamos programados para la insatisfacción. Siempre queremos más.
Yo lo empecé a leer como un libro de intriga esperando una resolución convencional y a ratos me resultó algo plano, junto con un final que me desconcertó. Pero conforme pasan los días voy encontrando nuevas capas de significado y me va gustando más, esa es la prueba clara de que la lectura me ha valido la pena.
Hoy, leyendo una de las reseñas (tantas buenas reseñas en GR, qué locura!) he descubierto el concepto Caledonian Antisyzygy, que viene a ser la dualidad y la lucha de opuestos en la literatura escocesa, cuyo ejemplo más conocido es El doctor Jekyll y mister Hyde de Robert Louis Stevenson. Y ciertamente este es unos de los temas principales del libro, la identidad y el yo, que en los años 60 adquieren tintes de obsesión social y dan lugar a corrientes como la antipsiquiatría y los gurús de todo tipo.
La trama principal son los diarios de una chica que sospecha que el suicidio de su hermana fue provocado por el peculiar terapeuta que la visitaba, A. Collins Braithwaite. Ella decide hacerse pasar por enferma para ir a su consulta a investigar lo sucedido. El autor intercala estos diarios, que le fueron enviados, con una especie de biografía documental de Braithwite, quien ejerce de terapeuta sin tener el título, simplemente subido a la ola desencadenada por personajes mediáticos como el psiquiatra escocés R. D. Laing. Al cuestionar el concepto mismo de enfermedad mental y admitir como normal las distintas identidades en lucha dentro de un individuo, Laing sacudió los cimientos de la psiquiatría de la época, presentando además al terapeuta como narrador poco fiable.
Me ha gustado mucho la protagonista, con una voz fresca y llena de sentido del humor, con sus dos personalidades en lucha, entre lo convencional y la liberación que traían los 'Swinging Sixties'.
Yo no era una Mujer Moderna e Independiente. Yo solo deseaba quedarme en casa, cuidando de mi papi, leyendo novelas y entreteniéndome delante del espejo de mi dormitorio. Maldije a Emmeline Pankhurst y a su pandilla de Jezabeles por haberlo estropeado todo.
El nombre que elige para su alma dual - Rebecca - nos remite a otro clásico literario, símbolo de la mujer que se enfrenta sola a la incertidumbre, tanto en su entorno como en su propia mente.
También me ha interesado la biografía de Braithwaite, donde aparecen personajes reales del ambientillo cultural del Londres de la época: los 'Angry young men' del teatro y el cine, los Beatles y muchos otros asoman la cabeza por allí y se apuntan temas como la represión sexual, la homosexualidad o las diferencias de clase.
En conjunto, una novela para leerla con calma, con la Wikipedia a mano y sin esperar giros espectaculares ni respuestas claras a los temas planteados.
'Si algo aprendí - escribe - es que por muchas comodidades materiales que le arrojes a un ser humano, siempre encontraremos algo que nos haga sentir miserables. Estamos programados para la insatisfacción. Siempre queremos más.
March 5, 2022
This novel is partly framed as the biography of Collins Braithwaite, a ‘forgotten 1960s psychotherapist’ (Braithwaite is the author’s own invention, but his beliefs have similarities with those of R.D. Laing and the anti-psychiatry movement). That framing involves the author having been sent the notebooks of an anonymous young woman, written in the 1960s. Not only (she believes) did Braithwaite’s controversial method of ‘untherapy’ cause her sister’s suicide, but he also included an unflattering case study of her in one of his books. Armed with this knowledge, the woman starts visiting Braithwaite as a client, albeit not as herself; she creates a more worldly and seductive alter ego whom she calls Rebecca. Little does she know she’s playing right into the hands of her adversary, who believes that everyone has multiple selves. And as her story goes on, she finds it increasingly difficult to leave Rebecca on the therapist’s couch.
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet pulls off the rare feat of writing two parallel narratives that are equally interesting and compelling. Braithwaite, while a repugnant character, is palpably charismatic; ‘Rebecca’ is charming and likeable in spite of (and possibly sometimes because of) her judgemental nature and tendency to fantasise. The details of Rebecca’s world are worthy of Anita Brookner or Barbara Vine, and the slow unfurling of her true nature is delectable. Having just finished Jennifer Egan’s brilliant The Candy House, I thought it would be very difficult to lose myself in a story again, but Case Study is just as engrossing.
Incredibly good cover, too.
TinyLetter | Linktree
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet pulls off the rare feat of writing two parallel narratives that are equally interesting and compelling. Braithwaite, while a repugnant character, is palpably charismatic; ‘Rebecca’ is charming and likeable in spite of (and possibly sometimes because of) her judgemental nature and tendency to fantasise. The details of Rebecca’s world are worthy of Anita Brookner or Barbara Vine, and the slow unfurling of her true nature is delectable. Having just finished Jennifer Egan’s brilliant The Candy House, I thought it would be very difficult to lose myself in a story again, but Case Study is just as engrossing.
Incredibly good cover, too.
TinyLetter | Linktree
August 18, 2022
Yes, I'm the great pretender
Hm, could a book feel more laboured than this one which relentlessly hammers the reader over the head with the not-even-original insight that identity is performative, multiple, constructed and unstable?
To be fair, GMB writes smoothly and fluently, and there's a sense of humour that makes this quite fun in places. But the found footage formula of His Bloody Project is repeated here in a - yawn - set of diaries sent to the 'editor' of this account, which is interspersed with the editor's own - dull - biography of the psychologist whom the diary writer is consulting.
The thing is, the beginning promises a mystery - did Veronica commit suicide as a result of therapy? - which never goes anywhere, and 'Rebecca' is one of the most obvious characters to be found in a book about psychiatry: There's even a scene where her first adult sexual encounter happens to the soundtrack of 'The Great Pretender'!
Lots of literary allusions get thrust in from the fairly obvious Rebecca and The Yellow Wallpaper, to quotations from King Lear's 'mad' scenes.
This might have worked better for me as a throwaway holiday read if a) the Braithwaite biography had been either eliminated or enlivened somehow, b) there had actually been some clever conclusion, c) if the book had been half the length.
November 18, 2021
Case Study is the fourth novel by best-selling award-winning Scottish author, Graeme Macrae Burnet. The audio version is narrated by Serena Manteghi and Graeme Rooney. Two years after her older sister suicides by throwing herself off a railway overpass in Camden, a young woman becomes convinced that notorious psychotherapist A. Collins Braithwaite is responsible for her death. Determined to prove his guilt, she poses as a patient, writing detailed notes of her sessions with him.
Over fifty years later, her cousin Martin “Grey” discovers the five notebooks and offers them to the author, who happens to be researching the psychotherapist with a view to writing a biography of this now-forgotten, disgraced character. At first sceptical, the author eventually decides to supplement his own material with the notebooks because, if nothing else, they tell an interesting story.
The young woman does not reveal her identity in her notebooks. For the purpose of her visits to Braithwaite, she adopts a persona she names Rebecca Smyth, creating for Rebecca an alternate life quite different from her own strictly controlled existence. Rebecca’s life is so attractive, she begins to inhabit it, rather losing sight of her initial objective as she is swept up in Braithwaite’s “therapy”.
This unnamed protagonist is clearly unworldly, her scheme evidence of a naïve arrogance. She is immature with a childlike self-absorption, admitting about herself: “I have understood from an early age that I am an unpleasant and spiteful person. I am unable to see events in any terms other than their benefit or injuriousness to myself.” Her thought processes often prove darkly funny.
With later visits, it’s clear she is losing touch with reality, having conversations and arguments with Rebecca; at one stage she records an exchange with Braithwaite thus:
“’I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered anyone quite as hollow as you. I’m beginning to wonder if you really are who you say you are.’
‘I often wonder the same thing,’ Rebecca responded, rather deftly, I thought. (She is so much brighter than me; I sometimes wonder whether I shouldn’t let her take over completely)”
The last notebook offers no clue as to the young woman’s ultimate fate, but her “progress” during the first four sessions with this unconventional man don’t suggest a promising future. Braithwaite, from the author’s research, is variously described as a “cheerleader for suicide” (having written a book titled Kill Your Self) and a “dangerous charlatan” who, throughout his life, never faltered in his conviction of his own genius.
While readers generally don’t skip over the prologue, many are tempted to ignore any post-script, but, as with previous Macrae Burnet novels, this is unwise as the Post Script forms an integral part of the whole. Once again, very cleverly written, Macrae Burnet’s latest work is thought-provoking, funny and utterly brilliant.
Over fifty years later, her cousin Martin “Grey” discovers the five notebooks and offers them to the author, who happens to be researching the psychotherapist with a view to writing a biography of this now-forgotten, disgraced character. At first sceptical, the author eventually decides to supplement his own material with the notebooks because, if nothing else, they tell an interesting story.
The young woman does not reveal her identity in her notebooks. For the purpose of her visits to Braithwaite, she adopts a persona she names Rebecca Smyth, creating for Rebecca an alternate life quite different from her own strictly controlled existence. Rebecca’s life is so attractive, she begins to inhabit it, rather losing sight of her initial objective as she is swept up in Braithwaite’s “therapy”.
This unnamed protagonist is clearly unworldly, her scheme evidence of a naïve arrogance. She is immature with a childlike self-absorption, admitting about herself: “I have understood from an early age that I am an unpleasant and spiteful person. I am unable to see events in any terms other than their benefit or injuriousness to myself.” Her thought processes often prove darkly funny.
With later visits, it’s clear she is losing touch with reality, having conversations and arguments with Rebecca; at one stage she records an exchange with Braithwaite thus:
“’I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered anyone quite as hollow as you. I’m beginning to wonder if you really are who you say you are.’
‘I often wonder the same thing,’ Rebecca responded, rather deftly, I thought. (She is so much brighter than me; I sometimes wonder whether I shouldn’t let her take over completely)”
The last notebook offers no clue as to the young woman’s ultimate fate, but her “progress” during the first four sessions with this unconventional man don’t suggest a promising future. Braithwaite, from the author’s research, is variously described as a “cheerleader for suicide” (having written a book titled Kill Your Self) and a “dangerous charlatan” who, throughout his life, never faltered in his conviction of his own genius.
While readers generally don’t skip over the prologue, many are tempted to ignore any post-script, but, as with previous Macrae Burnet novels, this is unwise as the Post Script forms an integral part of the whole. Once again, very cleverly written, Macrae Burnet’s latest work is thought-provoking, funny and utterly brilliant.
July 13, 2022
Ha, ha, and Ha, for good measure. This is very fun and playful and boy, did I have some trepidation going in. Mental health is generally handled pretty poorly. In this, a fictional author, who has come across a salacious book on psychiatry by an enigmatic (again, fictional) author, finds himself in a position of using a story that is unverifiable and tied to the psychiatrist in question: Collins Braithwaite. Conjoining this windfall of a novel with the authors own research into the figure, this novel creates a liminal space where the voracity of the author writing it is in question, as well as the fictional characters in the novel and the biography on Braithwaite (which references further fictional accolades, of course).
If you’re thinking Borges-esk, you wouldn’t be wrong. There are some references in both that are real-world and correct. Things like movies and random books. Also, some characters, such as Braithwaite’s lover, Zelda, seem pretty “inspired” by writers. Hedonistic party romps in the 60s have the couple more than a little reminiscent of the writer(s) of The Great Gatsby.
Primarily, the text is concerned with positing the idea of the self constantly evolving or shifting, kind of like code switching, or roles actors play. And that there is a kind of “madness” in everyone, if that’s the case. At what point is someone’s persona a reality? and what happens when we acknowledge these alternate personas for what they are? Rather than go into an actual diagnostic of the protagonist in the novel, it’s much more concerned about the themes, which then cascade into the alternate components of the narrative in a very playful intertextuality.
Prose work took a bit to get used to, then became absolutely captivating. It’s the write level of pretension for me; both with the character herself, as well as the concept of the novel. It even has some meta humour that lands with me, such as an epilogue where people write into the author of the novel compiled as a second printing note, where they complain about the inaccuracies in the fiction to the physicality of London itself.
When and if this gets its hooks in you, I hope you’ll enjoy as much as I did. Wonderful.
If you’re thinking Borges-esk, you wouldn’t be wrong. There are some references in both that are real-world and correct. Things like movies and random books. Also, some characters, such as Braithwaite’s lover, Zelda, seem pretty “inspired” by writers. Hedonistic party romps in the 60s have the couple more than a little reminiscent of the writer(s) of The Great Gatsby.
Primarily, the text is concerned with positing the idea of the self constantly evolving or shifting, kind of like code switching, or roles actors play. And that there is a kind of “madness” in everyone, if that’s the case. At what point is someone’s persona a reality? and what happens when we acknowledge these alternate personas for what they are? Rather than go into an actual diagnostic of the protagonist in the novel, it’s much more concerned about the themes, which then cascade into the alternate components of the narrative in a very playful intertextuality.
Prose work took a bit to get used to, then became absolutely captivating. It’s the write level of pretension for me; both with the character herself, as well as the concept of the novel. It even has some meta humour that lands with me, such as an epilogue where people write into the author of the novel compiled as a second printing note, where they complain about the inaccuracies in the fiction to the physicality of London itself.
When and if this gets its hooks in you, I hope you’ll enjoy as much as I did. Wonderful.
August 19, 2024
Graeme Macrae Burnet loves to mix media in his novels. By that I mean, he often includes several different "documents" in the telling of his story, and often a rather meta note from the author (himself). He likes to layer. It's what I remember from His Bloody Project, and it's here in spades in the delightfully stylish Case Study.
First of all, it has to be said, how sexy is that cover?
It brings to mind something Hitchcock. A lovely (but disturbed) Tippi Hedren stretched out on the quintessential shrink's couch. A cigarette brought to those perfect lips. A dead mother and sister in the background, both fallen (or pushed?) from a height. An over-sized devotion to her father. An attractive housekeeper, despised.
And the shrink. He's written a book called "Kill Your Self". He's non-conformist, he's charismatic, he's a little dangerous. There's a dead patient in the background. She fell from a height, too.
Do you trust the documents that tell us about these two? Graeme Macrae Burnet doesn't have 100% certainty, and he tells us so. It's an artful way of playing with the idea of identity, while at the same time truly enjoyable as a story.
These days, popular books that dominate lists are more often than not sentimental and operatic, so I thrill to find idiosyncratic treasures such as this one. Unique, intelligent, crafty, entertaining, alluringly ambiguous.
First of all, it has to be said, how sexy is that cover?
It brings to mind something Hitchcock. A lovely (but disturbed) Tippi Hedren stretched out on the quintessential shrink's couch. A cigarette brought to those perfect lips. A dead mother and sister in the background, both fallen (or pushed?) from a height. An over-sized devotion to her father. An attractive housekeeper, despised.
And the shrink. He's written a book called "Kill Your Self". He's non-conformist, he's charismatic, he's a little dangerous. There's a dead patient in the background. She fell from a height, too.
Do you trust the documents that tell us about these two? Graeme Macrae Burnet doesn't have 100% certainty, and he tells us so. It's an artful way of playing with the idea of identity, while at the same time truly enjoyable as a story.
These days, popular books that dominate lists are more often than not sentimental and operatic, so I thrill to find idiosyncratic treasures such as this one. Unique, intelligent, crafty, entertaining, alluringly ambiguous.
May 10, 2025
4.5
Ależ to było ciekawe i świeże! Książka zaczyna się od wyjaśnienia przez fikcyjnego autora (choć inicjały ma identyczne jak faktyczny autor książki) na temat materiałów w posiadanie których przypadkiem wszedł. Otrzymał od obcej osoby dzienniki pewnej kobiety, która po samobójczej śmierci swojej siostry obwinia za tragedię jej ekscentrycznego psychoterapeutę. Kobieta sama zaczyna u niego terapie, by go zdemaskować.
I tak zaczyna się osadzona w Londynie lat 60-tych, pełna satyry szalona i misternie skonstruowana historia szkatułkowa z ciekawą strukturą i zmiennym sposobem narracji. Narracji, która co chwilę zagania nas w kozi róg, myli tropy, drwi z nas, miesza nam w głowie i tak naprawdę non stop zmusza do kwestionowania co tu jest prawdą co wymysłem.
Książka okazała się bardzo w moim stylu. Dałam się tej grze ponieść i bawiłam się wybornie, ale ja uwielbiam niewiarygodnych narratorów i nieoczywiste zakończenia. Ale to nie tylko mrocznie zabawna historia, autor dotyka też kwestii poważnych. Tożsamość, świadomość istnienia, podwójne jaźnie, kwestionowanie nauki, szkodliwość źle prowadzonej terapii i wiele innych tematów do dyskusji.
Mocne polecanko!
Ależ to było ciekawe i świeże! Książka zaczyna się od wyjaśnienia przez fikcyjnego autora (choć inicjały ma identyczne jak faktyczny autor książki) na temat materiałów w posiadanie których przypadkiem wszedł. Otrzymał od obcej osoby dzienniki pewnej kobiety, która po samobójczej śmierci swojej siostry obwinia za tragedię jej ekscentrycznego psychoterapeutę. Kobieta sama zaczyna u niego terapie, by go zdemaskować.
I tak zaczyna się osadzona w Londynie lat 60-tych, pełna satyry szalona i misternie skonstruowana historia szkatułkowa z ciekawą strukturą i zmiennym sposobem narracji. Narracji, która co chwilę zagania nas w kozi róg, myli tropy, drwi z nas, miesza nam w głowie i tak naprawdę non stop zmusza do kwestionowania co tu jest prawdą co wymysłem.
Książka okazała się bardzo w moim stylu. Dałam się tej grze ponieść i bawiłam się wybornie, ale ja uwielbiam niewiarygodnych narratorów i nieoczywiste zakończenia. Ale to nie tylko mrocznie zabawna historia, autor dotyka też kwestii poważnych. Tożsamość, świadomość istnienia, podwójne jaźnie, kwestionowanie nauki, szkodliwość źle prowadzonej terapii i wiele innych tematów do dyskusji.
Mocne polecanko!
August 28, 2022
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Literary Fiction + Historical Fiction
This is a story that is set in the 1960s in the UK. Rebecca Smyth begins seeing the therapist (Collins Braithwaite) who she believes was responsible for her sister Veronica's suicide two years ago using a false identity. Rebecca keeps a number of notebooks to document her experiences with this psychotherapist. But soon she finds herself sucked into a world where she can no longer have any certainties and that includes her own identity.
In the first few pages of the book, the author tells us about his own experience and how he wrote this book. He received the notebooks from unknown sources, allegedly written by a woman who truly believes that a famous psychiatrist was the main reason behind her sister’s suicide. This gave the author the foundation of this story.
Besides being literary fiction, this is also partly historical fiction as well as a thriller. The pace of the story is slow and the thrilling part is very subtle. It suits the atmosphere of the book. Nothing crazy like the mainstream thrillers. However, I did not feel the significance of the 1960s era in the story. This could be a personal thing. You might disagree. The writing is really good and shows the author’s talent and expertise in his field. I’m not sure how I feel about the ending though. I wish the conclusion was somehow stronger.
Genre: Literary Fiction + Historical Fiction
This is a story that is set in the 1960s in the UK. Rebecca Smyth begins seeing the therapist (Collins Braithwaite) who she believes was responsible for her sister Veronica's suicide two years ago using a false identity. Rebecca keeps a number of notebooks to document her experiences with this psychotherapist. But soon she finds herself sucked into a world where she can no longer have any certainties and that includes her own identity.
In the first few pages of the book, the author tells us about his own experience and how he wrote this book. He received the notebooks from unknown sources, allegedly written by a woman who truly believes that a famous psychiatrist was the main reason behind her sister’s suicide. This gave the author the foundation of this story.
Besides being literary fiction, this is also partly historical fiction as well as a thriller. The pace of the story is slow and the thrilling part is very subtle. It suits the atmosphere of the book. Nothing crazy like the mainstream thrillers. However, I did not feel the significance of the 1960s era in the story. This could be a personal thing. You might disagree. The writing is really good and shows the author’s talent and expertise in his field. I’m not sure how I feel about the ending though. I wish the conclusion was somehow stronger.
August 13, 2022
Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize
I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger, and if proved to be right (a rare occurrence admittedly), this notebook might serve as some kind of evidence. Regrettably, as will become clear, I have little talent for composition. As I read over my previous sentence I do rather cringe, but if I dilly-dally over style I fear I will never get anywhere. Miss Lyle, my English mistress, used to chide me for trying to cram too many thoughts into a single sentence. This, she said, was a sign of a disorderly mind. ‘You must first decide what it is you wish to say, then express it in the plainest terms.’ That was her mantra, and though it is doubtless a good one, I can see that I have already failed. I have said that I may be putting myself in danger, but there I go, off on an irrelevant digression.
In 2019, Graeme Mccrae Burnet published a blog post The Strange Cases of Maeder and Braithwaite, referring to psychiatric case studies he had discovered in two obscure books, one by Alphonse Maeder and the other by Collins Braithwaite, a contemporary and, at least in his own mind, rival of R.D. Laing.
In the comments someone remarked that this was intriguing but was it material for his next novel, and Burnet confirmed it was, a novel to be titled Case Study. Case Study follows the style of Burnet's previously Booker featured His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae, with the use of what the author claims are found documents relating to a real-life case. He explained this approach to his fiction in The Bookseller
Although this willingness to admit the artifice outside of the novel's pages, and the fact that the uncertainty doesn't survive a moment's googling, makes this a rather less immersive experience that the epitome of the genre, the brilliant The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas.
Case Study consists of two alternating sections:
- the author's own biography of Collins Braithwaite; and
- notebooks he claims to have been sent after his blog post written by a woman who became a patient of Braithwaite under an assumed identity. She had done so after discovering that her sister, who committed suicide, may have been one of Braithwaite's patients as a very similar case is featured in his anonymised book of Case Studies.
The narrator of these sections tries to make herself appear "a nut" so as to be accepted as a patient, but it is clear from the early pages of her account that she is somewhat delusional, and as her account goes on the 'real' her and her assumed identity start to come into conflict.
Meanwhile in the biographical sections, Burnet carves out a plausible place for Braithwaite in the counterculture of 1960s London.
For a nearly 300 page novel, this was a quick and enjoyable read, and Braithwaite's theories ("Don't kill yourself. Kill your Self.") are interesting in their own right, particularly as played out in the life of both the author of the notebooks but also his own life.
But it felt the novel was begging an ending, drawing the two threads together, and the one provided is rather unsatisfactory.
And as for Braithwaite, I couldn't help but feel Will Self had already created him in Zack Busner.
3.5 stars rounded to 3 as this is on the Booker longlist and Gordon Burn Prize shortlist and so my expectations were high.
I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger, and if proved to be right (a rare occurrence admittedly), this notebook might serve as some kind of evidence. Regrettably, as will become clear, I have little talent for composition. As I read over my previous sentence I do rather cringe, but if I dilly-dally over style I fear I will never get anywhere. Miss Lyle, my English mistress, used to chide me for trying to cram too many thoughts into a single sentence. This, she said, was a sign of a disorderly mind. ‘You must first decide what it is you wish to say, then express it in the plainest terms.’ That was her mantra, and though it is doubtless a good one, I can see that I have already failed. I have said that I may be putting myself in danger, but there I go, off on an irrelevant digression.
In 2019, Graeme Mccrae Burnet published a blog post The Strange Cases of Maeder and Braithwaite, referring to psychiatric case studies he had discovered in two obscure books, one by Alphonse Maeder and the other by Collins Braithwaite, a contemporary and, at least in his own mind, rival of R.D. Laing.
In the comments someone remarked that this was intriguing but was it material for his next novel, and Burnet confirmed it was, a novel to be titled Case Study. Case Study follows the style of Burnet's previously Booker featured His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae, with the use of what the author claims are found documents relating to a real-life case. He explained this approach to his fiction in The Bookseller
I think people will Google Collins Braithwaite and think he is real, because I write about him in a documentary style.
...
When you write in a documentary format it signifies truth to the reader, or reality. Whereas when [a book is written] in the first person, there’s a much stronger feeling that you don’t need to believe what you’re reading and that the [character] may be misleading you.
...
It’s fascinating to me, because when we read novels, we know it’s not real; yet what we seek from a novel, or what I seek from a novel, is a feeling of reality. In order to immerse yourself in a novel I think you have to feel that it is real, even though we know that it’s not true, it’s all made up.
Although this willingness to admit the artifice outside of the novel's pages, and the fact that the uncertainty doesn't survive a moment's googling, makes this a rather less immersive experience that the epitome of the genre, the brilliant The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas.
Case Study consists of two alternating sections:
- the author's own biography of Collins Braithwaite; and
- notebooks he claims to have been sent after his blog post written by a woman who became a patient of Braithwaite under an assumed identity. She had done so after discovering that her sister, who committed suicide, may have been one of Braithwaite's patients as a very similar case is featured in his anonymised book of Case Studies.
The narrator of these sections tries to make herself appear "a nut" so as to be accepted as a patient, but it is clear from the early pages of her account that she is somewhat delusional, and as her account goes on the 'real' her and her assumed identity start to come into conflict.
Meanwhile in the biographical sections, Burnet carves out a plausible place for Braithwaite in the counterculture of 1960s London.
For a nearly 300 page novel, this was a quick and enjoyable read, and Braithwaite's theories ("Don't kill yourself. Kill your Self.") are interesting in their own right, particularly as played out in the life of both the author of the notebooks but also his own life.
But it felt the novel was begging an ending, drawing the two threads together, and the one provided is rather unsatisfactory.
And as for Braithwaite, I couldn't help but feel Will Self had already created him in Zack Busner.
3.5 stars rounded to 3 as this is on the Booker longlist and Gordon Burn Prize shortlist and so my expectations were high.
August 19, 2022
Longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize
With his second appearance on the Booker Prize longlisted after His Bloody Project, Graeme Macrae Burnet returns with the 'true' story of a psychiatrist who makes a splash with his unconventional, possibly unethical practices in 1960s London.
A young woman visits Collins Braithwaite, the enigmatic figure, under the guise of Rebecca Smyth. Her real name, through the journals we read, is never revealed to the reader. However, her sister, Veronica, had been a patient of Braithwaite a few years prior, and she believes Braithwaite inadvertently had a hand in Veronica's suicide.
Interspersed between these journal entries from our unnamed narrator, we get a biographical account of Braithwaite's life as written by an author whose initials are GMB. Much like His Bloody Project, Macrae Burnet blurs the line between fact and fiction, pulling the reader into this page turning, gripping psychological drama.
However, where you may think this story is going due to its tone, it does not lead. It's quite a subdued story, looking instead at the rise of modern psychiatry, the idea of people containing separate 'selves', and the effects that social and gender norms may have on individuals. I think the early chapters may lead you into a false sense of this story being more thrilling than it turns out to be, which made the ending a bit underwhelming for me.
Nevertheless, I think Macrae Burnet is a fantastic writer. This was such an easy, enjoyable reading experience. I truly was curious to see where it went, and though the destination wasn't mind-blowing, the journey was entertaining and had me curious throughout. I don't really see this one advancing to the shortlist only because thematically it didn't go deep enough. If it had gone deeper, I would forgive it's listless plot and milquetoast ending. But alas, it didn't commit fully to either plot or character resolution, and leaves little to be examined.
With his second appearance on the Booker Prize longlisted after His Bloody Project, Graeme Macrae Burnet returns with the 'true' story of a psychiatrist who makes a splash with his unconventional, possibly unethical practices in 1960s London.
A young woman visits Collins Braithwaite, the enigmatic figure, under the guise of Rebecca Smyth. Her real name, through the journals we read, is never revealed to the reader. However, her sister, Veronica, had been a patient of Braithwaite a few years prior, and she believes Braithwaite inadvertently had a hand in Veronica's suicide.
Interspersed between these journal entries from our unnamed narrator, we get a biographical account of Braithwaite's life as written by an author whose initials are GMB. Much like His Bloody Project, Macrae Burnet blurs the line between fact and fiction, pulling the reader into this page turning, gripping psychological drama.
However, where you may think this story is going due to its tone, it does not lead. It's quite a subdued story, looking instead at the rise of modern psychiatry, the idea of people containing separate 'selves', and the effects that social and gender norms may have on individuals. I think the early chapters may lead you into a false sense of this story being more thrilling than it turns out to be, which made the ending a bit underwhelming for me.
Nevertheless, I think Macrae Burnet is a fantastic writer. This was such an easy, enjoyable reading experience. I truly was curious to see where it went, and though the destination wasn't mind-blowing, the journey was entertaining and had me curious throughout. I don't really see this one advancing to the shortlist only because thematically it didn't go deep enough. If it had gone deeper, I would forgive it's listless plot and milquetoast ending. But alas, it didn't commit fully to either plot or character resolution, and leaves little to be examined.
May 7, 2024
Graeme Macrae Burnet has delivered an oddly fascinating book in “Case Study” which will have you trying to keep things balanced as you strive to lock down what is real. This is a book of fiction… probably. The characters are fabrications… probably. The narrators are reliable…well, not really. And so it goes.
“GMB” has contemplated writing a biography of Collins Braithwaite, a flakey, flamboyant psychoanalyst who was once the toast of 1960’s London. Braithwaite could boast celebrity clients and anti-psychiatric best-selling books with titles of “Untherapy” and “Kill Your Self.” One day GMB is presented with journals of an unnamed woman whose mission was to prove Braithwaite’s direct responsibility for the suicide of her sister, Veronica. This woman’s strategy was to become a patient under an assumed name, Rebecca Whyte, with a completely different identity– this so she could avoid any connection to her late sister.
We see Braithwaite for the cad he is. He is cruel to women, dangerous and manipulative with the lives of those who put their trust in him. Meanwhile we see the created character of Rebecca, who began merely as a cloaking device, evolving into a “self” fulfilling needs her original personality craves and has never allowed herself to indulge.
“Case Study” poses a number of questions regarding psychiatry and the search for one’s true “self,” but keeps you off-guard with unreliable sources throughout. Its humor and utterly original characters earned it a spot on the Longlist for the 2022 Booker Prize. Highly recommended.
“‘But what’s the point in being someone you’re not?’ I said. ‘What’s the point in being whoever it is you think you are?’” – Unnamed… or, was that Rebecca?
Thank you to Biblioasis and Edelweiss for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
“GMB” has contemplated writing a biography of Collins Braithwaite, a flakey, flamboyant psychoanalyst who was once the toast of 1960’s London. Braithwaite could boast celebrity clients and anti-psychiatric best-selling books with titles of “Untherapy” and “Kill Your Self.” One day GMB is presented with journals of an unnamed woman whose mission was to prove Braithwaite’s direct responsibility for the suicide of her sister, Veronica. This woman’s strategy was to become a patient under an assumed name, Rebecca Whyte, with a completely different identity– this so she could avoid any connection to her late sister.
We see Braithwaite for the cad he is. He is cruel to women, dangerous and manipulative with the lives of those who put their trust in him. Meanwhile we see the created character of Rebecca, who began merely as a cloaking device, evolving into a “self” fulfilling needs her original personality craves and has never allowed herself to indulge.
“Case Study” poses a number of questions regarding psychiatry and the search for one’s true “self,” but keeps you off-guard with unreliable sources throughout. Its humor and utterly original characters earned it a spot on the Longlist for the 2022 Booker Prize. Highly recommended.
“‘But what’s the point in being someone you’re not?’ I said. ‘What’s the point in being whoever it is you think you are?’” – Unnamed… or, was that Rebecca?
Thank you to Biblioasis and Edelweiss for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
August 11, 2022
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022
Another book which I read thanks to its Booker longlisting, and my second Burnet after His Bloody Project. Like that book most of it purports to be found documents, but this time Burnet went further and extended the subterfuge online. Its central character is a maverick pyschotherapist in 60s London, Collins Braithwaite, whose biography is interleaved with five notebooks written by one of his patients, a woman who concocts a false identity to investigate the mysterious apparent suicide of her elder and more talented sister, and finds the false identity provides opportunities that her real rather humdrum life deny her.
The whole thing is very well done, and entertaining to read. The setting may be overfamiliar but for me the characters and the unreliable narration more than make up for that.
Another book which I read thanks to its Booker longlisting, and my second Burnet after His Bloody Project. Like that book most of it purports to be found documents, but this time Burnet went further and extended the subterfuge online. Its central character is a maverick pyschotherapist in 60s London, Collins Braithwaite, whose biography is interleaved with five notebooks written by one of his patients, a woman who concocts a false identity to investigate the mysterious apparent suicide of her elder and more talented sister, and finds the false identity provides opportunities that her real rather humdrum life deny her.
The whole thing is very well done, and entertaining to read. The setting may be overfamiliar but for me the characters and the unreliable narration more than make up for that.
August 3, 2022
Graeme Macrae Burnet is an expert at creating something fictional and making it seems realistic, more than that, he can make you believe that the event or person actually existed. Such was the case of His Bloody Project, which was about a fictional murder taking place in 1869, disguised as true crime. Once again, he does the same thing with Case Study.
The book begins with the author (presumably) being given six notebooks which contain information about the (fictional) psychotherapist Collins Braithwaite. The notebooks themselves were written by a lady who thinks that Braithwaite drove her sister to commit suicide. In order to pull off her investigation she assumes a false persona.
As she visits Braithwaite, she starts believing in her new identity and Braithwaite’s unorthodox methods of psychotherapy create confusion, until it comes to a point where this character by coming to terms with her past is creating an inward battle of her real persona and fake one.
This is all quite meta. To add to this, GMB creates a complete biography of Braithwaite which conclude each notebook, which does help tie up some details found within with the lady’s narrative.
The actual murder itself is just a cover up. What really emerges from the text are a number of themes. Mainly reality vs fiction. All the characters battle with an unreal self, yet what differentiates these characters is how they deal with it, Despite Braithwaite being seen as a crackpot, there is a lot of good advice which does make sense and help us understand why we are all phonies.
Case Study also doubles as a history of psychotherapy. As I stated before, Graeme Macrae Burnet is a stickler for detail, which is why his plots mirror reality so well. There is historical accuracy so it is interesting to see how the discipline developed and was viewed.
Incidentally does the main protagonist manage to solve the mystery? It’s open to interpretation. That’s all I’m going to say here.
Did I like the book? I loved it. The writing, plot, characters. Everything was brilliant. Case Study played around with my brain and made me giggle a bit in the process as there are quite a few humorous moments. One thing though, I hope that GMB never becomes a minister of propaganda he’d be too good at his job and make us ordinary citizens believe a lot of things.
The book begins with the author (presumably) being given six notebooks which contain information about the (fictional) psychotherapist Collins Braithwaite. The notebooks themselves were written by a lady who thinks that Braithwaite drove her sister to commit suicide. In order to pull off her investigation she assumes a false persona.
As she visits Braithwaite, she starts believing in her new identity and Braithwaite’s unorthodox methods of psychotherapy create confusion, until it comes to a point where this character by coming to terms with her past is creating an inward battle of her real persona and fake one.
This is all quite meta. To add to this, GMB creates a complete biography of Braithwaite which conclude each notebook, which does help tie up some details found within with the lady’s narrative.
The actual murder itself is just a cover up. What really emerges from the text are a number of themes. Mainly reality vs fiction. All the characters battle with an unreal self, yet what differentiates these characters is how they deal with it, Despite Braithwaite being seen as a crackpot, there is a lot of good advice which does make sense and help us understand why we are all phonies.
Case Study also doubles as a history of psychotherapy. As I stated before, Graeme Macrae Burnet is a stickler for detail, which is why his plots mirror reality so well. There is historical accuracy so it is interesting to see how the discipline developed and was viewed.
Incidentally does the main protagonist manage to solve the mystery? It’s open to interpretation. That’s all I’m going to say here.
Did I like the book? I loved it. The writing, plot, characters. Everything was brilliant. Case Study played around with my brain and made me giggle a bit in the process as there are quite a few humorous moments. One thing though, I hope that GMB never becomes a minister of propaganda he’d be too good at his job and make us ordinary citizens believe a lot of things.
August 11, 2022
Better than average metafiction. The middle portion of the book is extremely witty and I quite enjoyed the unintentionally funny Rebecca Smythe. Unfortunately, the intrigue and multi-level mystery that Burnet has crafted fairly fizzles out in the final third.
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
January 27, 2022
I really enjoyed the three books I’ve previously read by Graeme Macrae Burnet (The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau (2014), His Bloody Project (2015), and The Accident on the A35 (2017)) so I was keen to read Case Study (2021).
Case Study is another gem. An intertwined tale. One strand focusses on the life and times of Collins Braithwaite, briefly a celebrated therapist and author of the 1960s anti-psychiatry movement. The second strand is about “Rebecca Smyth” a character who suspects her sister’s suicide may have been the result of her consultations with Collins Braithwaite. Revealing anything else would diminish the pleasure of a cleverly structured and potentially unreliable narrative that embraces the social attitudes of the 1960s, anti-psychiatry, identity, and the 60s counterculture. It’s both amusing and provocative. I was engrossed from start to finish.
5/5
More about Case Study (2021)…
“I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger.”
London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character.
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents these notebooks interspersed with his own biographical research into Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling – and often wickedly humorous – meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.
Case Study is another gem. An intertwined tale. One strand focusses on the life and times of Collins Braithwaite, briefly a celebrated therapist and author of the 1960s anti-psychiatry movement. The second strand is about “Rebecca Smyth” a character who suspects her sister’s suicide may have been the result of her consultations with Collins Braithwaite. Revealing anything else would diminish the pleasure of a cleverly structured and potentially unreliable narrative that embraces the social attitudes of the 1960s, anti-psychiatry, identity, and the 60s counterculture. It’s both amusing and provocative. I was engrossed from start to finish.
5/5
More about Case Study (2021)…
“I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger.”
London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character.
In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents these notebooks interspersed with his own biographical research into Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling – and often wickedly humorous – meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.
August 5, 2024
"Caso Clínico" es un libro inusual. Un extraño híbrido entre novela, diario personal y biografía. El propio autor se involucra parcialmente en la historia. Es él quien recibe unos cuadernos vinculados con la historia de un polémico psicoterapeuta. Además, nos enfrentamos a una narradora que considera seriamente la posibilidad de que dicho terapeuta incitara al suicidio a su hermana. Convencida de eso, decide adoptar un nombre ficticio (Rebecca) y hacerse pasar por una nueva paciente que acude a él en busca de atención. Pronto comprendemos que esa narradora, que nos habla a través de una especie de diario, parece haber extraviado por ahí algunos caramelos del tarro (ups, tal vez no podamos confiar completamente en la veracidad de su relato después de todo...) En paralelo iremos descubriendo, detalladamente, la biografía del controversial psicoterapeuta.
Es claro que no estamos frente a un thriller o a un caso policial que apunte a ser resuelto. La novela aborda el tema de la identidad, del doble, de las personalidades o los "yoes". Y lo hace de forma reflexiva y compleja. No creo que sea positivo describir mucho más. Tal vez sea difícil para mí explicarlo porque (Marge, no voy a mentirte) no estoy segura de haberlo entendido del todo. Aunque creo que comprendo el juego que el autor quiere proponer. Un juego entre la realidad y la ficción, bastante entretenido por momentos. Aseguro que disfruté de la escritura de este señor y del estupendo desarrollo psicológico de los personajes, pero el rumbo caótico y desconcertante de la historia, completamente intencional por otra parte, puede abrumar/aburrir a algunos lectores.
Es claro que no estamos frente a un thriller o a un caso policial que apunte a ser resuelto. La novela aborda el tema de la identidad, del doble, de las personalidades o los "yoes". Y lo hace de forma reflexiva y compleja. No creo que sea positivo describir mucho más. Tal vez sea difícil para mí explicarlo porque (Marge, no voy a mentirte) no estoy segura de haberlo entendido del todo. Aunque creo que comprendo el juego que el autor quiere proponer. Un juego entre la realidad y la ficción, bastante entretenido por momentos. Aseguro que disfruté de la escritura de este señor y del estupendo desarrollo psicológico de los personajes, pero el rumbo caótico y desconcertante de la historia, completamente intencional por otra parte, puede abrumar/aburrir a algunos lectores.
April 28, 2023
quite literally could not put this down… ill put more later goodnight
edit: i haven’t stayed up until 5am just to finish reading something in a while, this book was impossible to close and when i did manage to i couldn’t stop thinking about it. both “rebecca” and braithwaite were SUCH interesting characters to read about. “rebecca”’s unraveling and the battle between herself and her persona reminded me a lot of black swan in a way. going into this i thought i would favour the journals more but i ended up enjoying the biography parts just as much. i think my favourite aspect though had to be the actual therapy sessions. reading about how these two characters interacted with eachother was thrilling. in general this book was so engaging though, i love how the biography aspect was where you got to connect a lot of what braithwaite believed to his sessions with “rebecca” and how in her attempts to uncover the mystery of her sister in part became braithwaite’s self/Self theory but manifesting in that more sinister black swan esc way.
**spoilers**
the validity of it all getting called into question at the end too was a fun touch, i think going into this i was expecting there to be a more cut and dry ending but honestly after finishing this i don’t think the lack of it is a disservice to the story at all.
edit: i haven’t stayed up until 5am just to finish reading something in a while, this book was impossible to close and when i did manage to i couldn’t stop thinking about it. both “rebecca” and braithwaite were SUCH interesting characters to read about. “rebecca”’s unraveling and the battle between herself and her persona reminded me a lot of black swan in a way. going into this i thought i would favour the journals more but i ended up enjoying the biography parts just as much. i think my favourite aspect though had to be the actual therapy sessions. reading about how these two characters interacted with eachother was thrilling. in general this book was so engaging though, i love how the biography aspect was where you got to connect a lot of what braithwaite believed to his sessions with “rebecca” and how in her attempts to uncover the mystery of her sister in part became braithwaite’s self/Self theory but manifesting in that more sinister black swan esc way.
**spoilers**
the validity of it all getting called into question at the end too was a fun touch, i think going into this i was expecting there to be a more cut and dry ending but honestly after finishing this i don’t think the lack of it is a disservice to the story at all.
September 18, 2022
This is not my first rendezvous with Graeme Mcrae Burnet. I've previously read and enjoyed His Bloody Project and The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau. So when his most recent novel earned its place on the Booker longlist, I needed no encouragement to get stuck in.
The story is mostly concerned with the affairs of Collins Braithwaite, a leading proponent of the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s and at one point known as "Britain's most dangerous man." At the beginning, the author tells us that he has come into the possession of several notebooks written by a former patient of Braithwaite's, who believes that he was the leading cause of her sister's suicide. The book then splits into two separate narratives. One gives us a biography of Braithwaite - his troubled upbringing, his study of psychology, his hellraising ways. The second storyline looks at the nameless narrator's attempts to investigate her sister's death. She becomes a patient of Braithwaite's under a false name, Rebecca Smyth. She exaggerates Rebecca's fragile emotional state, in the hopes that he will continue to treat her, and she in turn can learn more about him. But she begins to enjoy this alter-ego a little too much, and it threatens to take over her whole life.
Once again, Mcrae Burnet takes pleasure in blurring the lines between fact and fiction. I had to do a quick Google to verify that Braithwaite was not in fact a real person, so convincing was his description. But I must admit that I didn't enjoy this book as much as the author's previous efforts. Not all of the story's mysteries were satisfactorily concluded, in my opinion. The biographical sections about Braithwaite were a little dry and pedestrian, for my tastes. Rebecca's descent into madness became harder to fathom and my interest waned. As I turned the last page, I wondered about the point of it all. Something to do with the nature of identity, but I couldn't summon the enthusiasm to think any further about it.
The story is mostly concerned with the affairs of Collins Braithwaite, a leading proponent of the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s and at one point known as "Britain's most dangerous man." At the beginning, the author tells us that he has come into the possession of several notebooks written by a former patient of Braithwaite's, who believes that he was the leading cause of her sister's suicide. The book then splits into two separate narratives. One gives us a biography of Braithwaite - his troubled upbringing, his study of psychology, his hellraising ways. The second storyline looks at the nameless narrator's attempts to investigate her sister's death. She becomes a patient of Braithwaite's under a false name, Rebecca Smyth. She exaggerates Rebecca's fragile emotional state, in the hopes that he will continue to treat her, and she in turn can learn more about him. But she begins to enjoy this alter-ego a little too much, and it threatens to take over her whole life.
Once again, Mcrae Burnet takes pleasure in blurring the lines between fact and fiction. I had to do a quick Google to verify that Braithwaite was not in fact a real person, so convincing was his description. But I must admit that I didn't enjoy this book as much as the author's previous efforts. Not all of the story's mysteries were satisfactorily concluded, in my opinion. The biographical sections about Braithwaite were a little dry and pedestrian, for my tastes. Rebecca's descent into madness became harder to fathom and my interest waned. As I turned the last page, I wondered about the point of it all. Something to do with the nature of identity, but I couldn't summon the enthusiasm to think any further about it.
February 3, 2023
Terrific! This won’t be for everyone, but I very much enjoyed this clever, twisty little book about psychology and identity. The characters are very vivid and feel so alive - and the narrator of the journals is very quirky and funny in a dark way that I love. The ending was perfect…..”An aging but still elegant actress” indeed.
Worthy of being on the Booker longlist for 2022. Bravo.
Worthy of being on the Booker longlist for 2022. Bravo.
March 8, 2024
If you're like me, you may have read the blurbs about this and thought to yourself: "Charismatic psychotherapist? Fake identities and suicide? Meditations on sanity and truth itself in a narrative where the reader can't be certain of anything? This sounds great and mysterious and it probably has a lot of twists and unique storytelling and it was Booker longlisted and I need to read it right away!!!
Well I'm here to tell you to cool off a bit, jeez. This is a pretty standard novel that is solid but not really all that surprising, and I would suspect that if you read this and got to the end, you'd close the book and let out a sound that would equate to an audio version of a shrug.
The novel bounces back and forth between a traditional biography of said charismatic psychotherapist and the journals of a woman who is seeing the psychotherapist to get some insight into why her sister (who was also a client) committed suicide.
The biography sections are fairly typical: they cover this pretty annoying guy who thinks he's a genius despite never doing anything to make that kind of claim, and basically charms his way into sleeping with a lot of women while also pissing off every person he comes into contact with. An unsympathetic character for sure, although mildly interesting to read about in a train-wreck kind of way.
The journal parts are a little more interesting, because the author is clearly going nuts herself, operating in at least two different personalities at war with each other. However she is also kind of a bore, mostly detailing her conversations with our psychotherapist and vaguely talking about being thrilled by sex and bondage, despite never letting herself enter any kind of situation where that might remotely be a possibility for her. (Even having a drink (!) with a man (!!) causes her to completely meltdown.) A qualified psychotherapist would certainly have a field day with such a person, but of course, there are none in this book.
Anyway things kind of fizzle out towards the end in predictable fashion, and sure, there might be some surface-level stuff going on here about the nature of self, identify as performance, we all wear masks, etc etc etc, but it doesn't live up to the expectations of the book's setup (nor the book's marketing blurbs), and it's just kind of an ok time. You're likely going to find both characters unsympathetic, so really your enjoyment will depend on how much you have fun with the structure (fake biographies that seem like they're real are always kind of fun) and the writing style. And those things are pretty good! But not particularly "dazzling" or "inventive".
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well I'm here to tell you to cool off a bit, jeez. This is a pretty standard novel that is solid but not really all that surprising, and I would suspect that if you read this and got to the end, you'd close the book and let out a sound that would equate to an audio version of a shrug.
The novel bounces back and forth between a traditional biography of said charismatic psychotherapist and the journals of a woman who is seeing the psychotherapist to get some insight into why her sister (who was also a client) committed suicide.
The biography sections are fairly typical: they cover this pretty annoying guy who thinks he's a genius despite never doing anything to make that kind of claim, and basically charms his way into sleeping with a lot of women while also pissing off every person he comes into contact with. An unsympathetic character for sure, although mildly interesting to read about in a train-wreck kind of way.
The journal parts are a little more interesting, because the author is clearly going nuts herself, operating in at least two different personalities at war with each other. However she is also kind of a bore, mostly detailing her conversations with our psychotherapist and vaguely talking about being thrilled by sex and bondage, despite never letting herself enter any kind of situation where that might remotely be a possibility for her. (Even having a drink (!) with a man (!!) causes her to completely meltdown.) A qualified psychotherapist would certainly have a field day with such a person, but of course, there are none in this book.
Anyway things kind of fizzle out towards the end in predictable fashion, and sure, there might be some surface-level stuff going on here about the nature of self, identify as performance, we all wear masks, etc etc etc, but it doesn't live up to the expectations of the book's setup (nor the book's marketing blurbs), and it's just kind of an ok time. You're likely going to find both characters unsympathetic, so really your enjoyment will depend on how much you have fun with the structure (fake biographies that seem like they're real are always kind of fun) and the writing style. And those things are pretty good! But not particularly "dazzling" or "inventive".
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
October 7, 2021
Case Study is the fourth novel by best-selling award-winning Scottish author, Graeme Macrae Burnet. Two years after her older sister suicides by throwing herself off a railway overpass in Camden, a young woman becomes convinced that notorious psychotherapist A. Collins Braithwaite is responsible for her death. Determined to prove his guilt, she poses as a patient, writing detailed notes of her sessions with him.
Over fifty years later, her cousin Martin “Grey” discovers the five notebooks and offers them to the author, who happens to be researching the psychotherapist with a view to writing a biography of this now-forgotten, disgraced character. At first sceptical, the author eventually decides to supplement his own material with the notebooks because, if nothing else, they tell an interesting story.
The young woman does not reveal her identity in her notebooks. For the purpose of her visits to Braithwaite, she adopts a persona she names Rebecca Smyth, creating for Rebecca an alternate life quite different from her own strictly controlled existence. Rebecca’s life is so attractive, she begins to inhabit it, rather losing sight of her initial objective as she is swept up in Braithwaite’s “therapy”.
This unnamed protagonist is clearly unworldly, her scheme evidence of a naïve arrogance. She is immature with a childlike self-absorption, admitting about herself: “I have understood from an early age that I am an unpleasant and spiteful person. I am unable to see events in any terms other than their benefit or injuriousness to myself.” Her thought processes often prove darkly funny.
With later visits, it’s clear she is losing touch with reality, having conversations and arguments with Rebecca; at one stage she records an exchange with Braithwaite thus:
“’I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered anyone quite as hollow as you. I’m beginning to wonder if you really are who you say you are.’
‘I often wonder the same thing,’ Rebecca responded, rather deftly, I thought. (She is so much brighter than me; I sometimes wonder whether I shouldn’t let her take over completely)”
The last notebook offers no clue as to the young woman’s ultimate fate, but her “progress” during the first four sessions with this unconventional man don’t suggest a promising future. Braithwaite, from the author’s research, is variously described as a “cheerleader for suicide” (having written a book titled Kill Your Self) and a “dangerous charlatan” who, throughout his life, never faltered in his conviction of his own genius.
While readers generally don’t skip over the prologue, many are tempted to ignore any post-script, but, as with previous Macrae Burnet novels, this is unwise as the Post Script forms an integral part of the whole. Once again, very cleverly written, Macrae Burnet’s latest work is thought-provoking, funny and utterly brilliant.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by NetGalley and Text Publishing.
Over fifty years later, her cousin Martin “Grey” discovers the five notebooks and offers them to the author, who happens to be researching the psychotherapist with a view to writing a biography of this now-forgotten, disgraced character. At first sceptical, the author eventually decides to supplement his own material with the notebooks because, if nothing else, they tell an interesting story.
The young woman does not reveal her identity in her notebooks. For the purpose of her visits to Braithwaite, she adopts a persona she names Rebecca Smyth, creating for Rebecca an alternate life quite different from her own strictly controlled existence. Rebecca’s life is so attractive, she begins to inhabit it, rather losing sight of her initial objective as she is swept up in Braithwaite’s “therapy”.
This unnamed protagonist is clearly unworldly, her scheme evidence of a naïve arrogance. She is immature with a childlike self-absorption, admitting about herself: “I have understood from an early age that I am an unpleasant and spiteful person. I am unable to see events in any terms other than their benefit or injuriousness to myself.” Her thought processes often prove darkly funny.
With later visits, it’s clear she is losing touch with reality, having conversations and arguments with Rebecca; at one stage she records an exchange with Braithwaite thus:
“’I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered anyone quite as hollow as you. I’m beginning to wonder if you really are who you say you are.’
‘I often wonder the same thing,’ Rebecca responded, rather deftly, I thought. (She is so much brighter than me; I sometimes wonder whether I shouldn’t let her take over completely)”
The last notebook offers no clue as to the young woman’s ultimate fate, but her “progress” during the first four sessions with this unconventional man don’t suggest a promising future. Braithwaite, from the author’s research, is variously described as a “cheerleader for suicide” (having written a book titled Kill Your Self) and a “dangerous charlatan” who, throughout his life, never faltered in his conviction of his own genius.
While readers generally don’t skip over the prologue, many are tempted to ignore any post-script, but, as with previous Macrae Burnet novels, this is unwise as the Post Script forms an integral part of the whole. Once again, very cleverly written, Macrae Burnet’s latest work is thought-provoking, funny and utterly brilliant.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by NetGalley and Text Publishing.
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