Pharmakon, or The Story of a Happy Family

by Dirk Wittenborn

An honest, insightful , and ruefully funny look at the fate of one American family vis-à-vis the rise of modern psychopharmacology, Pharmakon, or The Story of a Happy Family is nothing less than a contemporary epic. The novel follows William Friedrich, an ambitious professor of psychology at Yale in the early 1950s, who has stumbled upon a drug that promises happiness to those who ingest it and fame and fortune to the man who can synthesize it. But when a brilliant and troubled research subject commits murder, the consequences will haunt Friedrich and his family for years to come.

Genres: Fiction, Psychology, Contemporary, Adult, Novels

406 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2008

About the author

DIRK WITTENBORN is a novelist (Fierce People, Pharmakon), screenwriter and the Emmy-nominated producer of the HBO documentary, Born Rich. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and summers on the wrong side of the tracks in East Hampton, NY.

Reviews

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was divided into four parts, and it basically felt like two different novels to me: part one, and parts two through four. I really liked part one, but part two slowly went downhill and by the time I reached part four, I had mostly lost interest. I'm giving it three stars overall, though, because the writing was good and I liked the premise.

Part I of Pharmakon was the story of Will Friedrich, a 1950s psychologist who thinks he may have stumbled on a powerful antidepressant. Partnering with psychiatrist Bunny Winton, he tests the substance and finds it dramatically effective in reducing depression and improving functioning -- until one of his research subjects, Casper, has a psychotic break and goes on a murder rampage. That day, Friedrich's youngest son dies under mysterious circumstances and the family subsequently lives in the shadow of his death and the possibility that Casper was the killer, and that he may return to do more damage. Part I is fast-paced and interesting, exploring complex relationship dynamics as well as those of a psychologist who is by no means immune to personality difficulties of his own.

Part II was where the story started to slowly fall apart for me. Narrated by Zach, the child born to the Friedrichs after their son's death, it read less like a novel and more like a standard dysfunctional-family-and-drug-abuse memoir, a possible prequel to “A Million Little Pieces” but less interesting, perhaps because it was a memoir-pretending-to-be-a-novel as opposed to a novel-pretending-to-be-a-memoir. It's the story of how Zach, who never manages to feel comfortable in his own skin, gradually becomes a serious substance abuser although he manages to snag a few surprising accomplishments along the way. Zach's decline appears to be connected to his father's excessively psychologically-minded childraising tactics as well as to the destructive events surrounding the family, but this is largely told to us rather than shown.

There were many good things about the concept of this book -- its clever title ("pharmakon" means both "poison" and "cure") really says it all, as it explores the various ways in which we try, and fail, to capture happiness (legal drugs, illegal drugs, psychotherapy, achievement, upward mobility, finding just the right suburban house, trying and failing to fit in socially, etc.). As the title suggests, our misguided attempts at seeking happiness often prove to be our undoing -- at least, that's what happens to many of the characters. It's an interesting idea to explore. Had Wittenborn extended part one and tightened, or even eliminated, parts two through four, it would have come closer to reaching its potential.

[Sebnem · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fikir iyi. Lakin karakterler karikatür derecesinde klişe. Milyonlarca benzerine Hollywood sinemasından aşina olduğumuz karakterler bunlar.

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rich story of parents and children, and the question of why things happen as they do - the characters intertwined inextricably with man's apparently relentless quest to fix ourselves with chemicals.

William Friedrich’s family is relentlessly stalked by the not-so-friendly ghost of Casper, a psychotic young man that took part in a pharmaceutical study developed and conducted by Friedrich in the early 1950s, who subsequently kills Friedrich’s study partner and whose presence continue to haunt the family in the following decades.

Choices, even well-intentioned ones, reverberate for years. William’s life will forever be changed, and his family affected for years, by the choice he makes to develop and test the world’s latest-and-greatest feel-good drug; his wife, Nora, makes the choice to dissuade a young Casper from his early plans for suicide, thus involving him in her husband’s research.

Throughout the story we are reminded again and again of the many facets of life affected through the double-edged sword of pharmaceuticals – legal or illegal. Chemical combinations that at one time seemed to smooth over mental and emotional disorders (perhaps facilitating an end to so many of the brutish methods once used on the mentally ill); coke, speed, and other drugs appeared to enhance endurance and produce ecstacy in the user; Dristan, Contac, Ritalin and others relieve characters’ physical symptoms of living in a world that they often seem ill-equipped to handle.

All of this set against the whirlwind background of time itself, America in the early 1950s to the 80s, and told through changing viewpoints and narration.

There are many stories being told in this book, many reasons, many actions and the oh-so-far reaching consequences; much more than one simple summary can give.

[Taha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bir psikolojik roman olan Farmakon pek haz alamadığım bir kitap oldu. Olay örgüsü dıştan bakınca insanı heyecanlandırıyor ama malesef bir ana konu üzerinden hikaye gitmiyor. Ben çok aksiyon beklemiş olabilirim :) Anlatım güzel ama hissiyat yok okurken. Karakterlerdeki ruhsal durumu hissedemedim. Hayal kırıklığı yaşadım.

[Tripp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novels, or modern ones at least, are very often negative forms of self-help books. While self-help books promote means of finding happiness, novels more often than not show how choices lead to bad outcomes. The reader hopefully will take the lessons and adjust their lives accordingly. I think a very good novel will often lead a person to reevaluate choices and consider how they might treat others better.

In Dirk Wittenborn's Pharmakon, the questions of happiness and the treatment of others are front and center. At the dawn of the pharmacological era, Dr. Will Friedrich, a psychologist with plenty of emotional issues of his own ambitiously pursues a plan to cure sadness with a substance distilled from a tropical plant. Things seem to go swimmingly and then they don't. The aftermath of the experiment leaves a path of destruction through two generations of Friedrichs.

Wittenborn is interested in the quest for happiness, which he makes out to be as elusive as the quest for Middle East peace. Nearly everyone in the book ends up compromising and settling for something they don't want. With more than one character given to abusing drugs and alcohol, he nicely compares legal means to find happiness with drugs to illegal ones.

The ending isn't terribly satisfying, but I enjoyed my journey with the characters. While much of the story is quite sad, or even tragic, the writing is crisp and often quite funny. Those looking for a skeptical look at the American Dream will find it here.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is actually two books, roughly divided between its first and second halves, and, unfortunately, the first one is a lot better than the second. It opens as if it's the (fictional) autobiography of one character, but quickly shifts into the biography of that character's father. This story is interesting. It tells the mostly linear story of psychologist William Friedrich and his pursuit of a potentially groundbreaking pharmacological discovery. The story propels forward with narrative momentum, colorful characters, and impactful twists. It's hard to say much about this story -- or at least about what makes it enjoyable -- without giving too much away, but suffice to say that it's a narrative thread I would have liked to continue following.

Instead, about halfway through, the book hands its narrative torch to Friedrich's son and what follows is a pastiche of sometimes interesting moments that never seem to add up to anything. This half of the book purports to show us how the father has inflicted his biography on the son, driving him to his eventual undoing. But the book never really sells this idea. There's a lot of the son, Zach, declaiming on his father's parenting and how it is the reason he is so messed up, or words to that effect. Only, we don't get many examples of either this awful parenting or this messed uppedness. We get, for example, a charming story about teenage, 1960s Zach falling for and meekly pursuing a local hippie girl, and then a passage where he basically says, "My dad is why I'm so messed up." The concrete examples of the elder Friedrich's manipulative, psyche-scarring parenting are so few and far between that they seem inconsequential. When things start going south for Zach, he just seems like your run-of-the mill teenage wastrel, not the victim of psychological abuse.

It's hard to take the book's (apparent) central thesis seriously when so little time is spent trying to prove it. And this problem is compounded by the fact that the (potentially) most interesting and character-defining part of Zach's life -- when he achieves modest success as a screenwriter and novelist, only to descend into a morass of drug abuse before trying to claw his way back up from rock bottom -- is entirely omitted from the book. We're just plopped into the future with a little narrative aside telling us that a bunch of stuff has happened in the meantime. Well why aren't we reading about it?

And then the book just kind of ends.

I breezed through the first half of this book thoroughly impressed and ensorcelled, and then had to trudge through the back half. It went from a can't-put-down to a can't-pick-up book, from the book I couldn't wait to find time to curl up with to the book I had to force myself to read amid all the other distractions and entertainments that surround me. The book showed such promise, and then squandered almost all the capital it had earned as it sputtered to an eventual halt. Reading this book felt like one of those baseball games where your team scores a bunch of runs in the first few innings and then you have to suffer through the late innings as an ineffectual starter and a parade of bumbling middle-relievers struggle to find the last twelve or fifteen outs before giving away what should have been a comfortable lead. With Pharmakon, Dirk Wittenborn wins the game, but just barely. It should never have been this close.

[Camille Tate · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If you like superficial people, you can't blame them when they're superficial to you."

I think I picked this book up in a Goodwill several years ago, where it sat on my shelf for many years, waiting to be read. I did not expect it to be such a devastating fun house mirror of many of my own human neuroses. As a masochist, I enjoyed it a lot! 😂

I love a book that spans generations, changes narrators, jumps back and forth in time and this one gave it all while also commenting on love, family dynamics, what it means to be sane, and the pharmaceutical industry. It was a perfect read for me, but I know others may find it pointlessly painful.

[Larry Buhl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really two books. The first is about a pharmacologist whose experiment results in the death of a fellow researcher at the hands of one of his subjects, and a constant menace to his family throughout the years. The second half is a coming of age story spanning the sixties, seventies, and eighties, with not much relationship to the first half except that the menacing character, Casper, is still in prison and has escaped once and might escape again. But there are long, long, long passages where he is not a factor at all. It's just an upper middle class family dysfunctional in the usual ways with a teen guy growing up and doing things teens did, with all the baby boomer milestones. First half was taut, and the opening line "I was born because someone tried to kill my father" (I'm paraphrasing because the book isn't handy) sets the tone. The second half is a bore. Five stars for the first half, one star for the second equals roughly three stars.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

So from this book I have learned a lot about myself, but mostly that my taste in books has changed. For that I have Margueya to thank. Thank you Marg ( no more sappy love story, friendship books for me). Bring on the heavy depressing stuff!
This book was super! It is well written, a fascinating story that keeps you thinking and engaged the whole time. He explores a lot of human psychology in a very real way throughout the story and with different characters. He gives the characters insight into themselves that he conveys to us very well. And he expresses a lot of ideas about family dynamics and how a tragedy can change the lives of the unborn.
I recommend this book highly and I look forward to my friends opinions on it ( even if they disagree)

[Asproreps Asprodites · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the sensibility of John Irving, this book develops a family whose dysfunction is one of the main characters. This is a beautifully written book with the story driven as much by the language as by the plot.

[Andrew Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Pharmakon at a Half-Price Books liquidation sale and picked it up with no background knowledge. It took me a while to get into for multiple reasons, but once I let the story pick up its own steam I was catapulted in and kept the pace up even as the book petered itself out by resolving a compelling bad guy too early and leaving the rest to a patchwork drama that doesn't hit all its marks. I will give Wittenborn credit for a wry narrative style that keeps things moving unexpectedly. I found myself often caught off-guard. Below are the thoughts of Goodreads user Dan, who clearly was willing to give more brainpower to thinking about the reading experience of this book and put all of this much better than I ever could.

--------

This book is actually two books, roughly divided between its first and second halves, and, unfortunately, the first one is a lot better than the second. It opens as if it's the (fictional) autobiography of one character, but quickly shifts into the biography of that character's father. This story is interesting. It tells the mostly linear story of psychologist William Friedrich and his pursuit of a potentially groundbreaking pharmacological discovery. The story propels forward with narrative momentum, colorful characters, and impactful twists. It's hard to say much about this story -- or at least about what makes it enjoyable -- without giving too much away, but suffice to say that it's a narrative thread I would have liked to continue following.

Instead, about halfway through, the book hands its narrative torch to Friedrich's son and what follows is a pastiche of sometimes interesting moments that never seem to add up to anything. This half of the book purports to show us how the father has inflicted his biography on the son, driving him to his eventual undoing. But the book never really sells this idea. There's a lot of the son, Zach, declaiming on his father's parenting and how it is the reason he is so messed up, or words to that effect. Only, we don't get many examples of either this awful parenting or this messed uppedness. We get, for example, a charming story about teenage, 1960s Zach falling for and meekly pursuing a local hippie girl, and then a passage where he basically says, "My dad is why I'm so messed up." The concrete examples of the elder Friedrich's manipulative, psyche-scarring parenting are so few and far between that they seem inconsequential. When things start going south for Zach, he just seems like your run-of-the mill teenage wastrel, not the victim of psychological abuse.

It's hard to take the book's (apparent) central thesis seriously when so little time is spent trying to prove it. And this problem is compounded by the fact that the (potentially) most interesting and character-defining part of Zach's life -- when he achieves modest success as a screenwriter and novelist, only to descend into a morass of drug abuse before trying to claw his way back up from rock bottom -- is entirely omitted from the book. We're just plopped into the future with a little narrative aside telling us that a bunch of stuff has happened in the meantime. Well why aren't we reading about it?

And then the book just kind of ends.

I breezed through the first half of this book thoroughly impressed and ensorcelled, and then had to trudge through the back half. It went from a can't-put-down to a can't-pick-up book, from the book I couldn't wait to find time to curl up with to the book I had to force myself to read amid all the other distractions and entertainments that surround me. The book showed such promise, and then squandered almost all the capital it had earned as it sputtered to an eventual halt. Reading this book felt like one of those baseball games where your team scores a bunch of runs in the first few innings and then you have to suffer through the late innings as an ineffectual starter and a parade of bumbling middle-relievers struggle to find the last twelve or fifteen outs before giving away what should have been a comfortable lead. With Pharmakon, Dirk Wittenborn wins the game, but just barely. It should never have been this close.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

"An interesting look at the fields of Psychology/Psychiatry in the 1950s and the startling, ripple effect that the consequences to our actions can have in every aspect of our lives."

Pros: An interesting look at a time when Mental Health was not as prevalent a subject as it is today and it was still very much stigmatized/The generational differences between the fifties/sixties so and so forth.

Cons: Frightening to think of how unregulated everything was back in the fifties/I wish the author would have gone into more detail as to what exactly it was that caused Casper Gedsic to decline so dramatically/Though Friedrich's reactions are understandable, he's kind of a controlling jerk as a Father.

Full Review:
In the 1950s, the field of Psychology was in its infancy. Most people who exhibited possible mental illnesses were quickly locked away into asylums and left to rot. William Friedrich is an untenured Psychology Professor at Yale who is trying to stumble upon that big break that will make him famous. When he begins a study with a fellow Professor to monitor the effects of a natural herb found in New Guinea that are used in tribes to alleviate the stress of battle etc, they think they've found their breakthrough.

Most of the participants who receive the drug are able to change their lives around and seem to be happier, more fulfilled people. Though no one has such a drastic transformation as Casper Gedsic. Before the study, he was an awkward, quiet, unnoticed, grunt in the offices of the Yale student Newspaper. He's frighteningly intelligent, disturbingly so and its that intelligence and his inability to relate to people on a basic level that makes him miserable.

He agrees to take part in the study and the transformation is astonishing. But it all comes crashing down. Ten days after the study is concluded and Casper is no longer taking the herb, he has a psychotic break and Friedrich's life is changed forever. The rest of the novel follows the resounding repercussions of Friedrich's actions, Casper's actions and how the consequences will follow Friedrich through the years. It has a profound effect on his wife, children; every aspect of his life.

Pharmakon, in itself, is a study of how all of our actions have consequences and how we must be so very careful with how we treat others because we don't know what kind of ripple effect it could have in our lives.

It was an interesting read. It had its good parts, its bad parts, but all in all it was an interesting look at Psychopharmacology in the 1950s and how things have evolved. There are now regulations, Institutional Review Boards, strict guidelines that must be adhered to whenever a study of a new drug is proposed. The lackadaisical attitude Friedrich had towards the possible side effects of his study and its consequences was startling to read but it made me grateful how far the field of Psychology and Psychiatry have come.

[Jenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars would be more accurate for how I liked this book. Better than okay, but not quite good. Dirk Wittenborn's Pharmakon is a coming of age story about a petty, selfish man, Will Friedrich, and the pain he wreaks upon the lives of those near him. The reader first sees the father come of age as he realizes his success, and then his youngest son Zach, coming of age in his father's shadow.

Will Friedrich is a brilliant man, but full of sour grapes and bitterness. Friedrich is a pharmacologist by training, born poor, who aspires to the greatness he feels he is owed. He sees himself as having his greatness thwarted by those around him who, if they would only do as he advises, would achieve greatness themselves and elevate him further.

In reality, he drives his children to self-doubt, pettiness and drug abuse. He holds his wife emotionally captive, though this is a prison she chooses. Given the relationship of the youngest son, Zach, to his father specifically, but peripherally, to his mother and siblings, it leads the reader to wonder if Wittenborn is not just exercising his own ghosts.

Regarding ghosts, the specter of a former patient turned murderer, Casper, floats around the edges of the story. Had Wittenborn chosen to develop the story of Casper more, it might have been a more interesting novel. Equally brilliant, Casper did not feel he deserved anything, counter to Friedrich feeling he deserved everything. Developing Casper more might have made Friedrich seem whiney and pathetic. As it were, the other characters could not carry that load and merely enhanced the flawed character of the father.

[Britain Valenti · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an odd one, but I can't deny how much it impressed me. It's very much in the style of these older, Dickensian novels that sprawl over the entirety of someone's life. But, Pharmakon is more about a family in total rather than a single protagonist. That's one of the things i found so striking about the book. The family - in total - IS the protagonist. I also really appreciate the skill in which the writer jumps from character to character, and how specific everyone's experience is. This book breaks a lot of conventions, and I wasn't too thrilled with how it ended. But, it's certainly about the journey over the destination.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hopefully all of my 2025 books will be this fascinating. Wittenborn has woven a nicely crafted story around the drug "culture" and the Friedrich family and a mostly unseen antagonist that drives their fate from the post-war times up to the turn of the century. Rich character development along with what is seemingly a constant threat to the family from the antagonist that the Yale psychologist with an experimental organic drug brought from a fumbling loser to a completely charmed and different life ... one that had him permanently placed behind bars for a murder. While this isn't a mystery per se, Wittenborn keeps a steady tension throughout.

[Garrett Rowlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent novel, which starts as a drama and becomes a tragedy and ends as a drama again. It's about the Friedrichs, an American family coming to age in the pharmaceutical fifties and the psychedelic sixties. When the attempt to develop a transformative drug goes awry, the fallout effects the family for the remainder of the book. I found the second half of the book a little less interesting than the first half, and the author raised some questions he didn't answer, as I see it. Still, a compelling read.

[Suzanne Singman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked the story until the very end.
The characters were well developed. They story was interesting, though less about drug culture than the reviews led me to believe. The impact on the family was insightfully portrayed.
Spoiler Alert
There were so many possible endings to this story. I felt set up in a way. The author laid out some alternatives and then took the 'easy' and in my opinion the dull way out. Life just keeps going on and there are no neat conclusions. Everything was so dramatic until the end. pfft

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

-way too long book about psychologist and his family
-one of his former patients kills the doctors co-researcher and possibly his son then it follows the family for 50 years after that
-some good quotes and exciting moments but still wasn’t spectacular
-liked the parrot and the dialogue but the tropes weren’t original (ie gruff father with a charming life he should have listened to and Casper haunting them)

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book randomly at the bookstore. I really enjoyed it. It follows a family through the 50s, 60s and 70s who are connected to the pharmaceutical industry and experience a serious tragedy. I was sorry to see it end. I found the entire family interesting.

[Mary Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had some good moments but overall I bit too slow with too many unanswered questions.

[Tess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audio book. Interesting family drama centered around the pharmaceutical industry.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable, if somewhat dark and depressing tale of one man’s ambition and the effects it has on his family.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a multi-generational story of a psychologist and his family that meanders at times but is always fascinating. Don't expect everything to be tied up in a bow and enjoy the ride!

[Emilie Oetter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gute Geschichte, doch nicht unbedingt meins.

[Kali · Rating 3 out of 5]

It stared out interesting but the end was not as exciting as i was hoping

[Karen Rudloff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had some exciting parts but it was confusing and wordy and didn’t compel me to want to read it without skipping chunks of pages to make it end faster.

[Robert Frecer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird book that wants to be many things at once, yet somehow succeeds to be nothing at all. Starts out as a Crichton-esque medical mystery, morphs into a young adult novel complete with the “kindly rich uncle with gadgets” trope, then sub-par Bildungsroman, then rumination on old age. Sometimes, the action did zoom in on an interesting moment, but it never lasted long enough.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a young, poor, ambitious psychologist at Yale, Dr. Will Friedrich wanted to make a name for himself. Dr. Bunny Winton and Will happened upon an herb that had the potential to help people feel happy. It was the early days of drug testing; they performed an early experiment on rats (and Dr. Winton experimented on herself and Will) before moving to a trial. One person getting the drug and not the placebo was student genius Casper Gedsic who had tried to commit suicide. The trial ended w/ tragic consequences that had long term impacts to Will's family.

Wittenborn's themes and metaphors are compelling. Seeing the dysfunctional family life of a psychologist is like reading about the wild children of ministers - right or wrong, we expect their lives to be more exceptional because the head of the family is schooled in the human psyche and ethics, respectively. I think the message is this: that just because you might think you know what makes someone tick or, more sinister, you might know how to manipulate someone, this doesn't guarantee a happy family. Will wanted his children to be ambitious, to want the same things he wanted, which was shorted sighted and destructive - he should have known better. Why wasn't his children's happiness the most important thing? How ironic, in fact, that he wanted to make strangers' lives better but couldn't see that his success didn't make him happy, so there was no guarantee that his children would be happy if they were rich/famous/successful, either. I also liked the parrot metaphor, that it's one thing to repeat something and another to comprehend it.

Reminded me a bit of Richard Russo - life in academia, how discrete individuals fit into small town life, etc.

I took it down a star b/c of the glitches in the writing. The story shifts in narration which works when done well; the prologue is narrated by the youngest son of influential Dr. William Friedrich and is written in the first person. Book One is written in the third person from the shifting perspective of the different characters, but it felt awkward, like the perspective was 9/10 true and 1/10 false. For example, in a Will section, we read that "Dr. Winton had thought about her lieutenant, but not about what Friedrich was suggesting." How would Will know this? This section is from Will's perspective...grrr. Another example: In a section from Will's perspective (I know this b/c I read things such as "Will didn't want to talk to him," something only Will or an omnipotent narrator would know), Will is referred to as Friedrich and as "her husband", implying that the perspective has shifted mid stream to Nora's perspective. The section ends with what Nora was imagining and wishing and feeling.

[Vince Darcangelo · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news...

This review originally appeared in the ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

Pharmakon
By Vince Darcangelo, Special to the Rocky

Published August 14, 2008 at 7 p.m.

* Fiction. By Dirk Wittenborn. Viking, $25.95. Grade: B-

Book in a nutshell: Wittenborn has mostly found success in moving pictures. Two of his screenplays, Fierce People and The Lucky Ones, have made it to the big screen. (The latter, about three Iraq war veterans returning home, starring Tim Robbins, hits theaters in September.) He also earned an Emmy nomination for producing the 2003 HBO documentary Born Rich.

In Wittenborn's new novel, Pharmakon, success is found not in movies but in the pharmacy. Pharmakon is an epic journey through the world of psychopharmacology from the 1950s to the modern day where psychotropic drugs are as prevalent as cell phones. The novel scales the family tree of psychologist Will Friedrich, a professor at Yale whose ambition to discover the ultimate happy pill puts him in close contact with Casper Gedsic, a suicidal freshman too smart for his own good whose insecurities and mental instability lead him to murder.

Casper becomes a figure that haunts the Friedrichs through the decades via a few close encounters but mostly as a Boo Radley-like specter while he's serving time in a mental institution. The impact of his actions ripples throughout this ambitious, though bloated, novel.

Sample of prose: "The boy who had drawn up plans for an atom bomb at seventeen grew into a man who turned himself into a different kind of secret weapon. Working slowly, patiently, outside of time, while Casper constructed one persona to distract and disarm Dr. Shanley, he reconfigured himself from within, rewired his heart to wreak havoc on Dr. Friedrich."

Pros: Wittenborn has created a compelling family history on a very timely and interesting topic. At times this book is brilliant, in particular in the opening and closing sections, which are filled with compelling action sequences and discoveries.

Cons: The middle gets weighed down with too many characters and too little action. The bloated prose makes the book much longer than it needs to be.

Final word: Kudos to Wittenborn for crafting an ambitious fable for the psychotropic age. I just wish the book's chemistry were a little more focused.

[D. · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me forever to read this book.

First, it went virtually untouched in the backseat of my car for over a month. And when I finally decided to just finish the darn thing, I let out a resigned sigh. I didn't buy this book. It was an accidentally shipment from QPB. I really HATE the books they've accidentally shipped me; as a general rule, the monthly featured selections must be books they need to get rid of.

I think Wittenborn didn't know the story he wanted to tell. I think he tried to get too "literary" with it -- switching POVs every book? It's a device for the writer who can't think of a clear way to tell a story. He wasn't skilled enough to make me think that was a fantastic way to go about it - instead, I thought, "He doesn't know where to go, how to tell it, what to do." And that's never a good sign.

I didn't GET the Casper stuff. Maybe I'm dense, but I don't think so. Why would it screw up Z's life so much? Because his family was hurt by it and so he grew up with a crazy dad and a depressed mom? UGH! Really? I hate to break it to Wittenborn, but that cliche is so played out. "My family is a joke, so I'm going to be a cocaine addict."

Maybe he lost me when Jack died. Oh...and Lucy's unborn child. STOP killing babies.

And why not answer at least that question? Or give Casper something else to do in book 3? If he is your driving force behind the family saga, why does he disappear?

Something was needed to tie this together -- something...else.

Here are some things that needed to happen:

*Casper goes off on a REAL rampage and kills lots of people. He only killed Bunny? Yeah, I said only. ONLY.
* END sooner. Book 3 is a waste of time. Book 2 is interesting...but it doesn't go anywhere.
*Or...what about actually having an ending. WHAT THE?!?! Nora got a hip replacement and that was supposed to be dramatic?

You want me to guess what happened? He tried to write about his dad and was probably too bogged down with what really happened in his past to make good fiction. Sometimes you have a choice = write a memoir or write 100% pure fiction. When you blend the lines, it's not appealing. You lose sight of what people/readers (they are paying $ for this you know...writers should understand that it's never about them fully) want and need.

Wittenborn has talented. In this book, it seems like talent wasted.