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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

Fictional psychologists and psychotherapists: 10. Don’t Stand So Close by Luana Lewis

6/12/2014

7 Comments

 
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When Stella hears the doorbell one dark winter’s afternoon, she ignores it. After all, she isn’t expecting anyone to call and she herself never leaves the house. But her visitor, inadequately dressed for the blizzard conditions, is persistent. Reluctantly, Stella lets her in.

Torn between suspicion and compassion, Stella is ill-equipped to handle the duplicitous teenager who wants to see her husband. Does Blue need protection or is she out to do the couple harm? How much of what she says can be believed and is Stella strong enough to face the truth?

Moving back and forth between Stella’s present dilemma, a series of undated therapy sessions, and a complex case at the Grove Road Clinic two years earlier, the reader gradually realises what’s at stake. We come to appreciate the depth of fear that has led to her withdrawal from the world and the danger that still lurks at the heart of Stella’s supposed safe haven. This is an engaging psychological thriller about vulnerability, trust and webs of deceit, in the manner of How to Be a Good Wife.


After berating so many writers for their unconvincing fictional therapists, I was excited to discover a novel written by a clinical psychologist. Would this provide the blueprint for others struggling to make their characters live and breathe?

Well, I was shocked by the therapy chapters right from the start, until I realised they were intentionally transgressive; in fact, they might serve as an object lesson for clients to guard against potential abuse. In the context of the novel they work very well: we’re left to guess at the identity of the participants, and, while we witness the process of seduction, it isn’t clear how much is fantasy and how much reality.

But I was disappointed in Stella: not so much in the quivering wreck we meet on the first page (although she is somewhat tardy in informing the police that she’s entertaining a possible juvenile runaway in her sitting room) but in the young clinical psychologist, two years post qualification, writing court reports at a plush private clinic. When the pompous Dr Simpson arrives for assessment, instead of working extra hard to gain his trust, she hands him a tedious-looking questionnaire and leaves the room. And the author knowing it’s wrong is no excuse for her allowing herself to become dependent on benzodiazepines or taking clinical files off the premises (p. 174) or arranging an impromptu session with a client after hours. Although she should be applauded for being the first of my fictional psychologists to be in receipt of clinical supervision, she ought to know that it’s insufficient to be getting it solely from a psychiatrist (wrong profession) who also happens to be her boss. While the boundaries might be more lax in the private sector than in the NHS with which I’m more familiar, she is still bound by the same code of conduct and I have to agree when she concludes:

She was a psychologist, she should’ve seen the signs. She should have suspected. (p. 302)

but, if she had, there wouldn’t have been a story.

Don’t Stand So Close is published by Transworld Books who kindly provided my review copy.

Next in this series, I’ll be analysing another thriller, this time featuring a chess-playing Freudian analyst in 1914 St Petersburg, Zugzwang by Ronan Bennett. I’d be delighted if you could join me.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
7 Comments
Geoff link
6/12/2014 06:41:51 pm

I've read a few books involving commercial law practices in London and most if not all depend on signifivpcant rule breaking for plot tension to work. I guess because a business of meetings document drifting and telephone calls is pretty damn dull. Is that essentially the problem here? Or can you envisage a properly performing therapist in a setting sufficiently intriguing to find a novel? If so - is this in fact part of your non nano - you'd better get on writing and show how it should be done! I'm writing Harry into a law firm but my bok is about farce, much easier to write in a law firm. Your posts get me thinking as well as wondering how I'm ever going to read enough to form the sorts of links you do.

Reply
sarah link
6/12/2014 06:50:17 pm

I'm not sure how you feel about this one. Did you like it as a reader but not so much the psychologist-as-author side of it?

Reply
Norah Colvin link
8/12/2014 02:33:54 am

Like Sarah I am a bit unsure also. It definitely sounds like the book wasn't the blueprint you were hoping for; or maybe as Geoff says your book will provide the blueprint that you are thankful this one didn't. I'm not sure that the description of 'psychological thriller' puts it on my list, though I do enjoy movies of a similar genre. I'd like you to spell it out a bit clearer for me and for Sarah! :)

Reply
sarah link
8/12/2014 09:11:37 am

I don't tend to read them, either, but also like the movies. I will watch a psychological thriller over a horror movie any day. They are so much more intriguing (usually).

Reply
Annecdotist
8/12/2014 09:36:19 am

Thanks for your comments, Geoff, Sarah and Norah. Excuse me for replying to the three of you together but I'm getting tardy with my replies and your comments do overlap.
I thought a bit about your suggestion that I'm less clear in this review than in others about what I think and it's quite possible that some professional loyalty has made me hedge my bets with this one. (I dread to think how I'd manage if I were reviewing the work of someone I actually knew.) As I don't read a lot of thrillers, I'm not in a strong position to judge, but I reckon I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd found the psychologist more convincing. She does that thing which is common in this genre (according to my husband who reads them and frequently complains of characters needlessly putting themselves in jeopardy) of being alone in a building with someone she doesn't trust. I'm not saying this would never happen, but it shouldn't be happening in such a casual way. So not a blueprint, not a favourite read, but not a disaster either. Clearer?
Am I writing the blueprint? No, no and no! One, I wouldn't dare after running this series. Two, I don't feel drawn to revisiting my career in this way. At least, not yet. In Sugar and Snails, I do have a psychologist but she's an academic with a very different mindset to the clinicals. In my current WIP, there's a clinical psychologist as a minor character and, though I think he's real, as things stand at the moment he wouldn't fit this series as the focus of the work isn't therapy. Actually, Geoff, I might have to consult you on this as, even though the underlying issues are extremely tragic (of course), the novel itself is treading quite close to farce. I'm not quite sure how that happened!
As for the comparisons with Law, while therapists might attend meetings and spend time writing reports etc, I think the work lends itself really well to fiction as it's about two or more people in a relationship: cue dialogue and soul-searching! I think a couple of the novels I've reviewed earlier for the series, particularly perhaps The Delivery Room comes quite close, and, if I didn't know that therapists are supposed to have supervision, I'd have thought it an excellent read.
Thank you for your interest and pushing me a bit further with my thoughts.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
11/12/2014 03:59:50 pm

Thanks for the clarification, Anne. While I have read few of these novels, reading your reviews and understanding how these books are true to, and where they deviate from, established professional practices would help me appreciate them more as I was reading. Sometimes while reading a novel, or watching a movie, events seem totally believable. At other times I wonder, "Would that really happen?" I think that question diminishes enjoyment a little because, for a story to work, it must be totally believable, within its context. I can see how deviations from accepted practices would reduce your enjoyment of a book. While readers must suspend disbelief to a certain extent, inconsistencies detract greatly from overall enjoyment. Perhaps readers with less insider knowledge may enjoy them more? I have certainly seen movies and read novels about which I share your husband's criticism of characters putting themselves needlessly, and against their better judgement, in risky situations.

Reply
Annecdotist
12/12/2014 09:05:28 am

Thanks, Norah, and thanks for pushing me to clarify further. Interestingly, especially given my response to Geoff (yes, I know you're not Geoff) I DO have a clinical psychologist in Sugar and Snails! Just a small role delivering a rather pleasant intervention of which (fortunately) I have no direct experience, but I hope I've portrayed it accurately. It must have slipped my mind given that it's not actually therapy as I would think of it (and such a pity as proper therapy might have been quite helpful).
Anyway, that's not what you asked about and yes I think people with less knowledge would get more enjoyment from any of these novels. But I have renewed my belief in this project having been recently reminded of a couple of friends who have not been as well served by therapists as they should have been.
But we do have to feel we can let ourselves go and trust the writer to enjoy fiction IMO and any anomaly gets in the way of that. Actually, I'm quite gullible as a reader, happy to be carried along and trusting everything, even with a narrator you're not supposed to trust, until it crosses some kind of threshold.

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