Seduction

Kate Fitzgerald is a rather unique individual. She is on a temporary release from prison where she was serving time for killing her husband. Why did Kate kill her husband? Was she abused? Did she come from a poverty stricken background? Was she uneducated with no real life skills? No, in fact, Kate isn't even sure why she killed her husband. Her search for answers to this exact question led to extensive self analysis and eventual fixation on the work of Freud. In turn, her passionate study of Freud led to a temporary release from prison to do research on the subject. Beyond the bizarre life of Kate Fitzgerald, my favorite part of this book was Kate herself. This is an extremely strong, intelligent, driven woman full of wit and a flaw filled realistic nature.

I just finished reading 'Seduction' mere minutes ago, and as soon as I finished I felt compelled to leap into cyberspace and spread the word about this novel. 'Seduction' is an intelligent, fast-paced romp through the worlds of Darwinian and Freudian theory, with some murder most foul (not to mention some Wedgwood china history) thrown in for good measure. If this sounds too pedantic, be assured that it is anything but. In order to temper the rather intellectual premise, Gildiner has created one of the funniest, smartest and most engaging female protagonists / narrators in recent memory. Kate Fitzgerald, an incarcerated felon-cum-Freudian scholar with her dead husband's blood on her hands, is one day plucked from her six-by-nine foot cell and recruited by an unctuous prison psychiatrist to investigate certain slanderous accusations being made against Sigmund Freud (and therefore the psychoanalytic community in general) by one Anders Konzak. Anders Konzak, a handsome intellectual golden boy and soon-to-be curator of the Freud archives, has suddenly (and in an embarassingly public fashion) denounced Freud as a [...] for unknown reasons. Kate is granted a temporary absence from prison, and along with another ex-con named Jackie, she begins to unravel the mystery behind Anders, Freud, and psychoanalysis itself. Although Kate, an incredibly insightful and well-read woman, is a fascinating lead character on her own, much of the novel's interest stems from her volatile relationship with Jackie. She's a glacial WASP princess, he's a gruff thug with bad teeth, and although they are both very intelligent they approach the case with very different attitudes and often clash over each other's methodologies. However, as the novel progresses a pseudo-romantic relationship begins to develop. Now, a stereotypical romance between them would be far too cliched for a novel as original and inventive as this one, but their strained 'courtship' is touching in its own way. This novel is, in many respects, similar to Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code'. Both novels, while fictional, have a strong basis in historical fact, and both weave together factual information with fictional details in such a way as to create a dream-like ambience in which one is rarely sure what is real and what is not. This, however, is most certainly a good thing. Both novels also provide tantalizing glimpses into worlds that are most often highly cloistered and insular - in 'The Da Vinci Code' it was the Catholic Church, and in 'Seduction' it is the world of psychoanalysis and the highly guarded Freud Archives. However, personally I enjoyed 'Seduction' much more than 'The Da Vinci Code'. I found the narrative voice of 'Seduction' to be much more engaging and erudite than that of 'The Da Vince Code', and I found the characters to be much more compelling and fully-realized. If you enjoy thrillers with a little more intelligence than most contemporary novels allow, then 'Seduction' definitely dese