ReView: Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet

Hmmm. That was my initial thought when I finished Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet.  

Of all the Booker Prize longlist titles this year, this was one that I was most excited to read based on its premise. Case Study begins with the author receiving a set of notebooks that the sender feels he may find useful. The author of these notebooks (journals) is unnamed woman whose sister recently committed suicide. She is convinced her sister’s unconventional psychotherapist Collins Braithwaite is somehow responsible. Taking on the alias of Rebecca Smyth, she starts therapy with Braithwaite to investigate. The author, who in a bit of meta-fiction is Burnet himself, includes the journal's contents in the novel as well as biographical portions on Braithwaite himself. 

There were many things I enjoyed about this novel.  

Among them were the journals written by Rebecca Smyth and her overall voice, which I found to be comical, sardonic while also being a bit unreliable. While it took me a good 10-20 pages to get into the rhythm of the book, once I was in, it was quite entertaining. I also appreciated how much the time and setting influenced the story; in the 1960s, mental health, particularly for women, was looked at in a much more archaic and simplified way than it was today. The story covers subjects like identity and the stigma around mental illness which are still applicable today.

However, there were a few elements that left something to be desired.

While I appreciated the unorthodox structure of the story, the story didn’t come together for me. An ineffective ending further contributed to this feeling; I felt like all of this was building towards something and I feel like it never got there. What intrigued me about this story was both its thriller elements as well as the role psychology played. But in the end, I felt like there was something I was missing, like maybe the meaning of it all went right over my head? There were points in the story when everything seemed to make sense, and other points when I felt like I was the one losing my grip on the story. But maybe that was the point?