Beautifully balanced between harrowing and humorous, Case Study follows a woman who seeks out a captivating psychotherapist whom she believes to be responsible for her sister’s suicide.
Longlisted for The Booker Prize 2022
"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.
Publisher: Saraband
ISBN: 9781913393441
Number of pages: 288
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
Edition: International ed.
'Enormous fun … a mystery and a psychological drama wrapped up in one. Case Study is a triumph.' - Alex Preston, Observer
'Brilliant, bamboozling … Burnet captures his characters’ voices so brilliantly that what might have been just an intellectual game feels burstingly alive and engaging.' - Jake Kerridge, Telegraph
“Sinister and cleverly done … punctures the myth-making of the period.” - Anthony Cummins, Daily Mail
“What’s real and what’s not is beside the point in this skilful portrait of a disturbed woman and her encounters with an experimental 1960s psychotherapist … Both strands quickly become compelling … I was hooked like a fish.” - Leyla Sanai, Spectator
'A thrilling investigation into the nature of sanity and identity' - Alice O'Keefe, Bookseller
“Poses questions about the nature of the self and the authenticity of identity … fine comic passages … shed[s] light on the dark places of the mind … He is an uncommonly interesting and satisfying novelist.” - Allan Massie, Scotsman
“Undoubtedly one of the best books of the year.” - Alistair Braidwood, Scots Whay Hae
'A masterclass of diversion … blurring the lines of fiction and reality … serious and witty at once … an enthralling read.' - Heather McDaid, The Skinny
'A novel of mind-bending brilliance. Graeme Macrae Burnet is a master of muddying the waters, of troubling ideas of truth and identity, fiction and documentary, and Case Study shows him at the height of his powers' - Hannah Kent
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... More
A woman throws herself off a railway bridge after yet another visit to her psychiatrist. This is the journey her sister makes while trying to discover why she committed suicide.
A well written novel that has lots of...
More
It’s to Graeme Macrae Burnet’s credit that, even after Googling to double-check, I’m still only 95% certain that both his main characters are fictional.
The book intersperses the journals of an anonymous woman...
More
Please sign in to write a review
Would you like to proceed to the App store to download the Waterstones App?