The all-but-assured success of Pete Roth--a Harvard graduate, first-year resident at a distinguished New York psychiatric hospital, and husband to a beautiful, ambitious lawyer--is jeopardized when the intoxicating Celine Walter re-enters his life as a patient
First-year resident at a prestigious New York psychiatric hospital, Harvard Medical school product Pete Roth is both confused and troubled by his relationship with would-be suicide Celine Walter. Two summers before, while his wife was out of town, Pete had a short affair with Celine, then a graduate student. He has never been able to forget her. Beautiful, brilliant, mad Celine proves bad luck for those who love her. She nearly destroys Pete's career by intimating to the other psychiatric patients that they are still having an affair. At times Pete's naive, obsessive fascination with her seems forced or out-of-character. By the author of the nonfiction Battles of Life and Death, this first novel features healthy doses of hospital politics and psychiatric jargon but is interesting and readable overall. Recommended for larger collections. James B. Hemesath, Adams State Coll. Lib., Alamosa, Colo. Copyright 1987 Cahners Business Information.
Pete Roth is the star psychiatric resident at Curtiss Psychiatric Institute on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He and his wife Sarah, an associate at an important midtown law firm, met and married when both were students at Harvard. Yuppies and then some, they're attractive, hardworking and clearly on the fast track. Then Celine comes onto Pete's floor at Curtisslovely, fragile-seeming, suicidal Celine, with whom Pete had a brief, significant affair during the summer his and Sarah's careers had kept them apart. When Celine is assigned to the resident with the shakiest reputation, Pete finds he can't maintain his professional distance. He becomes obsessed with her progress, gets involved in her treatment, grows apart from Sarah and even questions his commitment to his profession. In the course of these events, which include a frantic effort to save Celine after another suicide attempt, Pete faces his own selfish needs, observing his use of power over others and questioning the range of his control (shaking his yuppie values to their foundation). Conveyed with humor and sympathy, especially for Peter, this first novel by a psychiatrist-writer, whose previous book was the nonfiction Battles of Life and Death, is a nicely rounded story (even with its inconclusive ending) about people struggling with love and control. Its details of the back-room goings on at the fictional institute lend a refreshingly down-to-earth air to the often rarefied atmosphere on the far side of the couch. (January 20) Copyright 1986 Cahners Business Information.
