Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

One of those books I'm glad I didn't discard and kept on reading. It started as a remake (one I deemed to be very lousy) of Love's Executioner by Yrvin Yalom, as in “let me put in a book the interesting cases of my career”. Needles to say, Yalom's experience is not comparable Lori Gottlieb's and I realised only later in the book that it wasn't her intention by far to copy him in any way. There are actually plenty of references to Yalom's work in the book.

After the first few chapters I decided to keep on reading just because I like psychology and I'm curious to see how the cases she's describing evolve, similar to the way I watched season 3 of In Treatment, I didn't particularly enjoy it, but I was curious and kept on going.

But then.. the magic happened. It wasn't her personal story or her own revelations, it had to do with those patients, their story, the doctor-patient relationship and the conclusions each drew. Some of these stories, albeit very remote from mine, managed to strike a chord with me and the ending of the book was simply splendid. I've enjoyed it thoroughly, but I'm not sure I would recommend that to anyone. At this point in my life I have someone very dear to me in exactly the predicament of the patients in the book was in and I find it very hard to decide whether to recommend the book or not.