Trauma

"McGrath at his dark-hearted best." --O, The Oprah Magazine"Beautifully crafted and paced, Trauma [is] either a superb psychological thriller or a masterly evocation of modern alienation and despair. . . . A terrific literary entertainment, one that will keep you on edge." --The Washington Post "Full of sensitive, well-observed touches [and] elegant when it needs to be. . . . McGrath makes us see that our own minds are the most haunted of houses." --Los Angeles Times"Ambitious. . . . McGrath uses his potent storytelling powers to draw us into [his narrator's] fevered brain and convey his emotional distress." --The New York Times"The inversion of roles, the blurring of the boundaries between the rational and the irrational, the violence, the twisted sexual passions, the slipperiness of memory: these are familiar themes in McGrath's fiction. Here they are recombined in powerful and imaginative ways. Trauma is a gripping psychological thriller. McGrath's prose is taut and lean; his way with characters is deft; and his explorations of the dark side of human nature are disturbing. And at the novel's centre, the descent of its narrator from a false sense of superiority into a pit of madness and despair is handled with great skill." --Andrew Scull, The Times Literary Supplement"Tortuous, often gripping...The novel is aptly titled, since trauma can be said to be the origin and the end of its insidiously uncoiling developments." --Sven Birkerts, The New York Times Book Review"A haunting story of a man in the grip of a painful and beautifully articulated spiritual malaise." --Publishers Weekly