I've never done a book review before (at least not since Elementary School). And Patrick McGrath wrote this particular book almost 20 years ago. So what's the deal? Why this book? Now?
There are a few deals. It's an excellent book. Most of you, I'm betting, have never heard of Patrick McGrath. He's typically referred to as a "writer of modern Gothic literature." Whatever that means. His books are moody. Atmospheric...in the sense that they create an atmosphere that you can see, smell, hear...almost touch. They are a bit dark. in that they describe Man and his passions in an unflinching manner. And yet...beneath all the layers of darkness, there is a veneer of romanticism. Is that what defines Modern Gothic? I have no idea.
I only know I couldn't put this book down when I read it...and 20 years later I could write a Cliff's note version of it from memory. Perhaps it seared itself into my mind due to circumstances in my life at the time I read it...though I think not. It was just good writing.
Dr Haggard's Disease is a book about obsession. It is a tale of adultery, and lust, passion, desire...betrayal...the inability to rid oneself of those feelings. The frailty of the body, and the perseverance of emotions...both the healthy ones and the unhealthy.
It's a tough read for the faithfull amongst us...it's a painful read, at times, for those of us who have ever gotten caught up in an affair. There are moments that you may not recognize yourself in...but then there are passages that may have been lifted from your own private diary, if you keep one.
Then again...maybe that's just me. That's the pleasure of literature. Sometimes it is profoundly personal, and other times it is unmistakably universal in its appeal. There are, no doubt, numerous novels that deal with "The Affair." Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair" comes to mind...and I have read that book at least 4 times. I have read this one 3 times.
I beg that you read it once.
Take a trip with me back in time. The year is sometime in the early years of WWII. The setting is a small town on the coast of England.
"My name is James Vaughan," you said. You didn't falter. You said: "I believe you knew my mother."
And so begins a tale of a man who meets the son of the woman with whom he was in love. Infatuated. Obsessed. A woman he hasn't seen in years, but whom has never left his mind. Indeed, he is crippled...and with every limp, every sharp pain in his hip, he is reminded of her...the morphine might deaden the pain, but it never blunts the memories.
And when he meets this unexpected visitor at his house...a house he deliberately chose in part because of it's distance from his past...those memories come flooding across him. Some waves are warm and others not so much...but the tide cannot be stopped. It is implacable. But then again...the undertow was always there. Tugging at him. Trying to pull him out from the shore he had sought refuge at.
He had found an equilibrium of sorts...through distance, and stoicism, and morphine to treat the pain. He had managed through sheer perseverance, sheer will power, to match the tug of that undertow with an austere resoluteness. He neither gave an inch, nor did the tide take one from him. Until her son arrived one day and knocked on his door. Suddenly, the currents changed...and he was no longer so firm.
The memories he had so successfully held at bay gained ground upon him. Breeching his defences. Overtaking him. We go back in time with him, and feel both his pain at reliving his memories, and the ecstasy of a brief interlude that has defined his life...emotionally and physically.
His limp...the cane he uses...the morphine he is addicted to..is the result of a badly broken hip suffered from a tussle which sent him tumbling down some stairs. He is held together by a steel pin which he has nicknamed "Spike." The tussle resulted when his affair with a married woman was discovered by her cuckhold.
But inch by inch, step by step, we are led along the path of his infatuation with this woman, and their consumation of the mutual attraction. We become obsessed with her as well. We see her only as the agonizingly beautiful and sadly unloved object of his desire. We smile when they succomb to each other. Make love to each other. Their passion burns upon the pages...not in a cheap, pulp novel kind of way...just the way that any illicit affair does between two people who desperately hunger for that human touch. Again...if you've travelled this road, you will recognize it. If you haven't...McGrath describes it so perfectly that you will feel you have been there before.
Of course it comes to an end...it always does. One party is always weak. Not able to match the words of their passion with deeds. One party is left bereft. Feeling betrayed. Totally blindsided and gut-punched. The other party goes along to get along, and puts it all behind them. Perhaps....
And time goes by...and old wounds heal but not quite. And then a young man knocks on the door and says "I believe you knew my Mother."
That's all I will say of the plot.
Patrick McGrath is an exceptional author. He has written three books that have been turned into films: "The Grotesque", which starred, if you can call it that, Sting. And "Spider", which was done by David Cronenberg. His novel "Asylum" was made into a film by David Mackenzie.
In each case, the novel was supremely better than the cinematic version.
He writes in a familiar genre...Gothic Literature...but he does so in an exquisite manner. The plots are riveting, the characters are real, his facility with the English language inspires anyone who has ever wished they could write. You love the words on the pages as you turn them.
READ HIS BOOKS.