STRANGE CASE OF MADEMOISELLE P

Whe Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer takes on the case of Marie Therese Paradies, a young woman stricken inexplicably blind at the age of three, he becomes involved in a tale of good versus evil set in eighteenth-century Vienna. A first novel.

Five monologues constitute this slight first novel, which begins promisingly but grows fussy and pedantic as it traces the methods of 18th-century physician Franz Anton Mesmer, father of hypnosis. In three of the novel's sections, Mesmer ruminates on his theories of animal magnetism and the scorn of rivals who charge him with quackery. He discourses on his healing practices, conducted in shrouded rooms where he strokes the thighs of patients to coax out their "universal fluid" while hired musicians (here, young Mozart) soothingly play. Mesmer grows entranced, even sexually obsessed, with his 18-year-old patient Marie-Therese Paradies, a skilled pianist suffering from blindness and melancholia whose cure he claims to effect. The remaining monologues belong to Marie-Therese and her father. The patient muses on her affliction, her trust in her doctor and her friendship with Mozart; Josef Paradies expresses concern for his daughter and fumes at the "fakery and nonsense" of "the pernicious Dr. M." Drawing on Mesmer's own treatise, the novel opens a window on a narrow vista of Viennese life but lacks the action and dramatic tension needed to excite the reader.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Art critic O'Doherty's first novel is a quiet, sure-footed, and sensitive glimpse into the inner workings of Enlightenment Vienna and the world of Mozart, the Empress Maria Theresa, and Dr. Franz Mesmer. In 1777, an 18-year-old girl by the name of Marie Th‚rŠse, named after the great (and reigning) Hapsburg empress, is brought for treatment to Dr. Mesmer, who is known--through his theory of ``animal magnetism''--for having previously cured cases of blindness. The lovely Marie is a gifted pianist whose talent--she plays duets with Mozart and performs often before the royal court- -has already earned her a royal pension. That her blindness is due to no organic flaw in her eyes is determined at once by the intelligent and soothing Dr. Mesmer--but his successful treatment of her hysterical blindness (mainly through massage of the body) also brings about an apparent diminishment in her musical skills. Marie's father, a ruthless courtier who desperately fears losing the remunerative favor of the Empress, is so alarmed at the loss of his daughter's performing ability that he schemes to bring about the disrepute of Dr. Mesmer and finally manages, in the face of the confused hysteria of his own crazed and deluded wife, to wrest her from Dr. Mesmer's care. This domestic and medical drama--unfolded in chapters told by the beleaguered Marie herself, by the good Dr. Mesmer, and by Marie's demonically self-interested father--allows O'Doherty to graze wonderfully amidst the living ideas of the Enlightenment, tasting its daily life, watching the French Revolution pass by, and offering jabs at the inadvertent narrow- mindedness of, for example, the rational Ben Franklin, who plays a part in the Commission denouncing the pre-Freudian Dr. Mesmer. Marie herself is pathetically captivating, and the novel she appears in is an intellectual tour-de-force of quiet powers abounding with nosegays of subtle historical pleasures. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In the Viennese imperial court at the end of the 18th century, a young blind woman undergoes treatment by Dr. Anton Mesmer, discoverer and promoter of the new science of "animal magnetism" (hypnotism). The patient's father, jealous of Mesmer, sets out to destroy the doctor but in the process ruins his daughter as well. Intriguingly conceived and exceptionally well written, this first novel compares favorably with Allen Kurzweil's A Case of Curiosities ( LJ 11/1/91). Both describe the same period, but they differ in their literary affiliations: Kurzweil's novel is picaresque, stepchild to Diderot and Restif; O'Doherty's is an odd hybrid of gothic romance and Enlightenment memoir. It's also extremely good, filled with strikingly beautiful synesthetic images in which light, memory, reality, imagination, new and old mingle as one domain of experience.
- David Keymer, SUNY Inst. of Technology, Utica
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.