The Strange Case of Jane O. (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

Description

In this spellbinding novel, a young mother suddenly experiences an uncanny hallucination, then eerie psychological symptoms that illuminate the strange dimensions of the human mind--and of love--from the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Miracles.

In the first year after her child is born, a woman suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, an inexplicable sense of dread. As Jane and her psychiatrist struggle to solve the mystery of what is happening to her mind, Jane suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found lying unconscious in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, during what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; she has no memory of her missing hours.

A police detective becomes suspicious, and begins to track Jane, convinced that she is lying and is a danger to others, especially to the infant son she loves. What do these experiences have to do with a trauma from Jane's past--a hallucination about a young man who died twenty years ago, who now appears to warn her of a disaster ahead? The mystery behind Jane's symptoms leads her forward-thinking psychiatrist deeper into Jane's life, and to reassess everything he thought he knew about the mind and about so-called reality, including events in his own life. To wonder, how do we know the surprising things that we know?

Inspired by The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks, Karen Thompson Walker's stunning and beautifully written novel is a speculative mystery about memory, identity, and fate, a provocative literary puzzle about the bonds of love between a mother and child, a man and a woman, as well as a celebration of the human mind.