A Private Sorcery

October 14, 2002
Gornick's debut starts with a bang when psychiatrist Saul Dubinsky is arrested for stealing drugs from the hospital where he works to support his addiction. What follows, however, is an erratic, somewhat listless exploration of the family and marital dynamics that landed the doctor in dire straits. Most of the book focuses on Dubinsky's wife, Rena, and his brother, Leonard, who scramble to find a lawyer for Saul. Despite their efforts, Saul is sentenced to four years when the state adds a manslaughter charge after the pharmacist who was held up miscarries following the crime. Rena tries to come to grips with her guilt for introducing Saul to a friend who fostered his addiction. After several difficult prison visits, she finally ends up asking Saul for a divorce, setting up an implausible, even bizarre resolution to their relationship. The final chapters find Rena and Leonard off to Guatemala, trying to track down the kidnapped child of Saul's mentor—a tangential subplot that adds nothing to the story. Gornick's writing is clean and luminous, and she offers some thoughtful, compelling observations about the family's troubles, but excess background detail frequently bogs down the plot, and Rena is a sketchy and unconvincing character, despite the effort put into her development. Gornick is a gifted prose stylist, but this is an uneven and unfocused first novel.
Literary Guild selection; 5-city author tour.

September 1, 2002
In her debut novel, Gornick combines her expertise in two fields: psychiatry (she is on the faculty at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research) and creative writing (she has an M.A. from New York University). The story revolves around Saul, a sensitive, dedicated psychiatrist; his distant wife, Rena; and his father, Leonard. Setting the narrative in motion is Saul's arrest for burglarizing his hospital's pharmacy. Chapters alternate between Rena's and Leonard's reflections on Saul's actions. Such is the power of the writing and the richness of the characters that only after one finishes reading do questions about the plot begin to nag. Would a young psychiatrist become addicted to sleeping pills, then other illegal drugs, after the attempted suicide of a patient whom, apparently, he had not yet met? Would Saul's mother, "horizontal" with psychosomatic illnesses for 30 years, suddenly arise and begin cooking, cleaning, and driving? Why does Rena go to Guatemala to retrieve the remains of the son of a dead teacher of Saul's? Ultimately, however, this novel rests not on plot but on characterization. None of characters is flawless, even those we most love; they can be self-absorbed, lustful, weak, or afraid of intimacy, both spiritual and physical. Yet they are human in all their complexity, and they are beautifully rendered. For all strong literature collections.-Judith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll. Lib., Bronxville, NY

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2002
Saul Dubinsky's promising psychiatry career derails after a patient's botched suicide attempt, and his subsequent addiction to prescription drugs soon leads him to a disastrous robbery attempt at his hospital's pharmacy. After his arrest, Saul's wife, Rena, and father, Leonard, are forced to examine the fissures in their own carefully structured lives and the long-buried truths from their pasts. Leonard, also a psychiatrist, is troubled by the similarities between his career and Saul's, as Leonard's own private practice ended soon after he felt he had failed a patient. Rena, however, must acknowledge the lingering effects that her troubled childhood now has on her present life as a high-powered political consultant. As the two work together to aid Saul, they forge a surprising friendship, bonded by their love for Saul and the painful truths they confront in their closest relationships. Told in dual narrative voices from both Saul and Rena's perspective, Gornick's beautifully constructed novel is an expert balance of humor and pathos that will leave readers anxious for her next work.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)