Doctor Sleep - Hardcover

Bell, Madison Smartt

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151261008 ISBN 13: 9780151261000

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991

Synopsis

Adrian Strother, an insomniac hypnotist, becomes involved with an unsavory drug trafficker and his henchman, while trying to save his faltering love life

About this title

Reviews

They start slowly, these journals, as the 15-year-old Woolf scratches out her record of personal and familial comings and goings, but they quickly acquire amplitude and content, as well as humor, as Woolf develops her powers of observation along with her style. There are references, mostly oblique, to family tragedies (Woolf had a bout with madness after the deaths of her mother and father, the noted Victorian scholar Leslie Stephen); limpid descriptions of the English countryside and its architectural adornments; lively essays inspired by her travels in Europe, particularly Greece; and, throughout, a swelling sense of literary professionalism. There is also a poignant and strangely prophetic meditation on a woman who committed suicide by drowning. Noted Woolf scholar Leaska provides a solid introduction, and the title he gives his scrupulously edited book seems exactly right.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Adrian Strother, a young American living in London, is the titular Doctor Sleep of this new novel by the author of Waiting for the End of the World ( LJ 9/15/90). A hypnotherapist by trade, Adrian fancies himself a necromancer as well, spending his off-hours in the British Museum studying the works of Giordano Bruno. He is possessed by the desire to learn the esoteric secrets by which he can attain godlike powers, an obsession which has, ironically, left him sleepless. As the novel opens, his lover Clara moves out just as two friends from his drug-addicted years in New York appear on the scene. Adrian's attempts to reconcile past and present lead to a series of waking nightmares involving punks, a drug lord, and shadowy operatives of Scotland Yard. In the end, he realizes his Faustian quest--only to find the result far different than he imagined. Part thriller, part psychological study, this is a notable addition to Bell's rapidly growing body of work. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/90.
- Law rence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151261008
• ISBN 13: 9780151261000
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 290