The Verificationist Book

What happens if 20 psychoanalysts meet for an informal supper in the Pancake House? This is the curious, and comic, starting-point of Donald Antrim's third novel, The Verificationist: "all the teaching analysts coming together as friends, drinking limitless coffee refills, sharing opinions and impressions of the various candidates at the Institute, of crises or patients' breakthroughs in our private practices". It sounds like a recipe for professional bedlam and Antrim runs with all the potential of his cast and setting. Thomas, the first-person narrator of the book, delivers his story at breakneck speed, delving in and out of the conscious and unconscious minds of himself, his colleagues and their waitress to craft a novel from the unsentimental and surrealist work of free association. Imagine, that Thomas is being held in the (immensely strong) arms of one of his male colleagues, Dr Bernhardt, who is trying to prevent the outbreak of a food fight: "Dr. Bernhardt is holding me in the air because he doesn't want me to throw cinnamon-raisin toast at Peter Konwicki...here I am in the air over everyone's heads, feeling sick to my stomach and hanging on to a pot lid!" Infantilism, sexuality, violence, authority, attraction: the commonplace ingredients of psychoanalysis become part of the heady mix of Antrim's narrative as it explores the ever-strange dynamics of a supper party to travel through minds, history and the bizarrely-imagined world of the therapeutic professionals. --Vicky LebeauRead More