Case Study

Description

Shortlisted for the 2022 Gordon Burn Prize Shortlisted for the 2022 Ned Kelly Awards Longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize Longlisted for the 2022 HWA Gold Crown Award Longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary AwardSELECTED BYNEW YORK TIMESAS ONE OF 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2022The Booker-shortlisted author ofHis Bloody Projectblurs the lines between patient and therapist, fiction and documentation, and reality and dark imagination.London, 1965. I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger, writes an anonymous patient, a young woman investigating her sisters suicide. In the guise of a dynamic and troubled alter-ego named Rebecca Smyth, she makes an appointment with the notorious and roughly charismatic psychotherapist Collins Braithwaite, whom she believes is responsible for her sisters death. But in this world of beguilement and bamboozlement, neither she nor we can be certain of anything.Case Studyis a novel as slippery as it is riveting, as playful as it is sinister, a meditation on truth, sanity, and the instability of identity by one of the most inventive novelists of our time.Praise forCase StudyCase Studyhas a lot in common with the novels of Vladimir Nabokov and Roberto Bolao, in which invented characters pass through tumultuous episodes of literary history that never quite happened, though it seems as if they should have Case Studyis a diverting novel, overflowing with clever plays on and inversions of tropes of English intellectual and social life during the postwar decades.New York TimesA mystery storyor is it?that takes us into the heart of the psychoanalytical consulting room. Or does it? Interleaving a biography of radical 60s untherapist Collins Braithwaite with the notebooks of his patient Rebecca, a young woman seeking answers about the death of her sister, GMB presents a forensic, elusive and mordantly funny text(s) layered with questions about authenticity and the self.2022 Booker Prize Jury StatementA twisting and often wickedly humorous work of crime fiction that meditates on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself.Gordon Burn Prize Jury CitationWith its layers of imposture and unreliability, the novel suggests that our personhood is far more malleable than we believe.New YorkerThe parallel tracks ofCase Studyare deeply satisfying because they encompass a sense of how we live day-by-day in doubt, often unaware of our own motivations.NY SunMacraes novel works on various levels. It is an elaborate, mind-bending guessing game; it is a blackly comic and quietly moving study of a nervous breakdown; and it is a captivating portrait of an egomaniac Macrae has reliably delivered another work of fiendish fun.Star TribuneBurnet is the ultimate unreliable narrator, andCase Studyserves as a worthy addition to his oeuvre.Chicago Review of BooksIt is a truly riveting novel, entertaining as it makes you question everything about it, and beautifully written. There are no wasted words in this book.Miramichi ReaderThe fictional author and Burnet share the same initials, which should be a clue as to how close the book will come to breaking the fourth wall The matryoshka-style layering of narratives, each dependent on the other, is engaging and disorienting.Case Studyis an immersive novel that stretches its fiction to fact-like proportions.Foreword Reviews(starred review)Ironical, intelligent and intriguing from first page to last, the fourth novel from Glasgow-based Graeme Macrae Burnet questions the tricky nature of identity.Winnipeg Free PressDarkly funny and, at times, deeply weird,Case Studyis a dense, complicated, singular work of meta-fiction. It asks deep and important questions without ever shoving them down your throat. Most importantly, though, it tells an interesting and engaging storythree of them, in fact. Its a ride well worth taking, even if it is sometimes quiet and subtle.Case Studyis well-deserving of its praise.Spectrum CultureBurnet evokes a place and an era very nicely, in pitch-perfect prose Case Studyis an artfully twisted and presented fiction about identity and the stories we tell, and a wonderful evocation of 1960s London.Complete ReviewCase Studyis a dizzying dive into British counterculture of the 1960s and the radical anti-psychiatry movement wildly inventive and slickly written. The notebooks feel so casually and authentically from the period, with Rebeccas word choices and the details she includes saying as much about 1960s British society as they do about her place in it. Rebecca is deliciously unreliable as a narrator.Jessica Brockmole,Historical Novels Review(Editors Choice)What decidedly it is is an enticing piece of metafiction that is impossible to put down, but not because it offers generated tension that is happily released when order and safety are restored. Instead it tempts us down one fascinating path after another without promising or providing any solutions.Reviewing the EvidenceBurnet weaves together found documents and the biography of a controversial psychologist to create an indelible portrait of a power struggle in 1960s London.Vol 1. BrooklynCase Studyreflects on relationships of power: the physical power of abusive men over women, the lingering power of memory over oneself.The Michigan DailyMacrae Burnett has created a dynamic work that has excellent characterisation with acute observation. The writing is layered but there is no use of superfluous words. While the themes are profound, the style is both intriguing and playful. He has created a book that is thought provoking and a compulsive read.Limerick City and County Libraries, IrelandA provocative send-up of midcentury British mores and the roots of modern psychotherapy brisk and engaging.KirkusBurnets deployment of multiple narrative structures, his finely tuned depiction of Braithwaite, and the fascinating revelations of the diarist result in an unforgettable story, one that will rattle readers long after its startling, disorientating ending.Shelf AwarenessEncourages us to look more closely at the inherent instability of fiction itself genuinely affecting a very funny book.Nina Allan,The GuardianBurnet propels readers through the novel with his fierce, hilarious intelligence.Crime ReadsBrilliant, bamboozling Burnet captures his characters voices so brilliantly that what might have been just an intellectual game feels burstingly alive and engaging.TelegraphA riveting psychological plot tortuous, cunning clever. Times Literary SupplementBurnets triumph is that its a page-turning blast, funny, sinister and perfectly plotted so as to revealor withholdits secrets in a consistently satisfying way Rarely has being constantly wrong-footed been so much fun.The TimesSuch is Burnets skill that he immediately convinces the reader that everything he is about to say is based on historical fact brilliantly depicted intriguing compulsive reading.Irish TimesYoull be completely beguiled by this sly, darkly comic offering, with its unreliable narrator and its equally unreliable author.Mail on SundayWhats real and whats not is beside the point in this skillful portrait of a disturbed woman and her encounters with an experimental 1960s psychotherapist Both strands quickly become compelling I was hooked like a fish.SpectatorPraise for Graeme Macrae BurnetsHis Bloody ProjectIts only a storyor is it? Graeme Macrae Burnet makes such masterly use of the narrative form that the horrifying tale he tells inHis Bloody Projectseems plucked straight out of Scotlands sanguinary historical archives.New York Times Book ReviewBoth a horrific tale of violence and a rumination on the societal problems for poor sharecroppers of the era.TIME[A] powerful, absorbing novel Authors from Henry James to Vladimir Nabokov to Gillian Flynn have used [an unreliable narrator] to induce ambiguity, heighten suspense and fold an alternative story between the lines of a printed text. Mr. Burnet, a Glasgow author, does all of that and more in this page-turning period account of pathos and violence in 19th-century Scotland [A] cleverly constructed tale Has the lineaments of the crime thriller but some of the sociology of a Thomas Hardy novel.Wall Street JournalRecalls William StyronsThe Confessions of Nat Turnerin the way it portrays an abused people and makes the ensuing violence understandable His Bloody Projectshows that the power held by landowners and overseers allowed cruelties just like those suffered by the Virginia slaves inConfessions. Halfway between a thriller and a sociological study of an exploitive economic system with eerie echoes to our own time,His Bloody Projectis a gripping and relevant read.NewsweekA thriller with a fine literary pedigree His Bloody Projectoffers an intricate, interactive puzzle, a crime novel written, excuse my British, bloody well.Los Angeles Times