Case Study is probably Burnet's best exposition yet of his unique compositional style. Here its a mix of supposedly found notebooks and biographical research, which lead or mislead your expectations as the book progresses. Case Study fascinates you, as it deconstructs both the crime novel and crime novelists, by calling into question, the writer, other peoples veracity, received knowledge and popular misconceptions. Who, if anyone, is telling you the truth here?
The book begins with Burnet being sent a set of notebooks recovered by a Mr Grey. At first he doesn't know whether to take them seriously. But they contain references to recognisable figures from the 1960's, such as R.D.Laing, some incidents appear to tie up with the facts, so he begins to take the contents more seriously. The notebooks are written by a woman whose real name is never mentioned, but who takes on the false name of Rebecca Smyth in order to become a client of Arthur Collins Brathwaite. Braithwaite even at the time they were written, was thought a scurrilously unprincipled psychologist, infamous for writing books on therapy called Kill Your Self and Untherapy. An extensive extract from the latter being quoted verbatim early on in the novel.
The notebooks writer believes Collins Braithwaite's therapeutic method led her vulnerable sister Veronica to commit suicide. Burnet researches into the life of Collins Braithwaite, who is indeed a horrible beast of a man, the epitome of what we would now call 'toxic masculinity'. But what he does have is charisma and an ability to use it to exert power over women in particular, whose trust he abuses. As the novel progresses it seems, Rebecca herself begins to lose grasp on her real identity, teetering on the edge of suicide herself. Rebecca becomes this sub personality that chides and castigates her over her many perceived failings. Collins Brathwaite ultimately falls from grace due to an under age sex scandal, and then declines into poverty and delinquency. Believing in his genius to the end.
Blurring the boundaries of fact and fiction is Graeme Macrae Burnet's key writing method. He deliberately turns himself as the writer into an unreliable narrator, as much as the notebooks reputedly written by Rebecca Smyth do. He deftly evokes the time in the sixties when radical and controversial psychological practitioners, such as R D Laing, were becoming known as the popular cutting edge trend of psychology. This forms the colourful and controversial background to Case Study. The predatory nature of Collins Braithwaite creating this horrendous knot of threat right in the centre of the book. He was certainly a rapist, but was he also culpable in other deaths? There is a very satisfying twist at the end that leaves you with an opaque, yet intriguing, conclusion to the novel.
Quite brilliantly conceived, Case Study portrays the character of Braithwaite as such an unappealing personality. Yet,paradoxically, he seems to be the only one who consistently is speaking the truth. Through all the derogatory comments he makes about psychotherapy, therapists being on the make. and clients becoming willingly dependent worshipers at their feet. These are frequently the funniest and most satirically scathing bits in the whole novel. He is a complete charlatan who people fall for, so in a way that proves his analytical method to be true, doesn't it?
CARROT REVIEW - 7/8
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