Eating Pavlova

by D.M. Thomas

A grieving Anna Freud, who has devoted her life to fit the needs of her famous father, reads his shocking diaries where his secrets are exposed, is unsure of his motives for writing them, and explores his conscious and unconscious world.

Genres: Fiction

304 pages

First published April 21, 1994

About the author

D.M. Thomas was born in Cornwall in 1935. After reading English at New College, Oxford, he became a teacher and was Head of the English Department at Hereford College of Education until he became a full-time writer. His first novel The Flute-Player won the Gollancz Pan/Picador Fantasy Competition. He is also known for his collections of verse and his translation from the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.

He was awarded the Los Angeles Fiction prize for his novel The White Hotel, an international bestseller, translated into 30 languages; a Cholmondeley award for poetry; and the Orwell Prize for his biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He lives in his native Cornwall, England.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The great Freud is slowly dying of mouth cancer (from the innumerable cigars he smoked) in London, tenderly cared for by his daughter Anna. The novel is a patchwork of memories, dreams, hallucinations, visions, and fabrications, with lots of references to actual persons (Freud's parents, wife, wife's sister, colleagues, patients). The reader quickly becomes confused. Googling names and reading background information helps a lot, and I didn't mind doing it since I'm interested in Freudian and Jungian psychology, but, after a few pages, some readers will likely opt not to continue reading.

There is no plot or linear time frame.

[Jessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Freud drifts in and out of morphine-laden consciousness reconstructing dreams, telling truths and half-truths about sex, life, and family, while faithful Anna attends to him.

[Brayli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only read 69% but had to stop because my psyche was being affected in ways unholy. Super difficult to rate this book because if it were for plot, I’d give it one star or maybe even zero. However, the writing was honestly incredible and meticulous and so threaded with witty genius- there were so many brilliant beyond brilliant uses of Chekov’s gun situations, so many precisely situated recalls that wouldn’t have landed had they been done even a chapter later. That, and the whole unfolding of the story (which primarily is Freud’s fictional dream/life/relation recollection) playing out in the exact chaotic and unreliable way that dreams do, while still feeling like it completely made sense for one character to just become another or for the setting to be one place and a whole different place entirely and for both things to be true. Very talented author, very disturbing book.

[Michael Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a novel of Freud’s memoir of his dying days. All lies and delusions. Psychoanalysis as daydreams and stories to amuse the Analyst. Freud is seen as a deceiver and manipulator, an egomaniac the ‘helps’ people only to be the center of attention. I liked the book.

[Leland Dalton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I am a big fan of DM Thomas, this book just did not work for me. It just seemed to drone on from one uninteresting point to the next.