A Version of Love: A Novel

by Millicent Dillon

Overview

"By turns tantalizing, chilling, spellbinding...an icy dissection of how men and women can drive each other completely berserk."—Carolyn See

Not since D. M. Thomas's bestseller The White Hotel has there been such a remarkable novel about women, hysteria, and the profession of psychiatry as practiced by men. Set in California and Mexico in the late 1950s and early 1960s, A Version of Love is a bizarrely riveting tale of transgressive desire. Its lead players form a precarious triangle: a psychoanalyst who sleeps with his patient; a female "hysteric" on the verge of being cured; and a loner in the Sierra foothills who goes panning for gold and then love. "A dazzling achievement" (Robert Olen Butler), "a work of almost spookily controlled intelligence," A Version of Love is a breakthrough novel by Millicent Dillon, who "deserves to be honored as an American master of fiction" (Philip Lopate). "A brilliant new novel. The assurance and economy with which she gives us this strangely gripping and powerful story...are the hallmarks of a consummate artist....Her finest work yet."—Diane Johnson

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393342505
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/17/2003
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Five times the recipient of O. Henry Awards for short stories, Millicent Dillon was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2001. A novelist, biographer, and playwright, she lives in Tallahassee, Florida.

Editorial Reviews

Novelist and biographer Dillon (Harry Gold; You Are Not I: A Portrait of Paul Bowles) has written a probing, intense examination of a corrosive affair between a psychoanalyst and his needy patient. Set in "1959 or 1960," the novel opens with Edmond and Lorle on a road trip across California's gold-mining country. Their affair is illicit and furtive; she has been seeing him (as a patient) for three years, and he has diagnosed her as a hysteric. The romantic relationship, a chilly affair in which they find each other alternately loathsome and enticing, is a new development. Both Edmond and Lorle are haunted by their concurrent divorces. As they drive along (mostly in silence), the two reflect on the paths that have led them here. The self-contained, aloof Edmond reconsiders the consequences of their fling, and he decides to give Lorle her walking papers. Prepared for an outburst, he is stunned and deflated by her subdued response to his rejection. Lorle exults in her brief moment of power, as Edmond sinks further into dejection. The third character in this dance of desire is Vern, a gold-panning recluse whom Edmond and Lorle meet as they pass through the Sierra foothills; Vern later shows up at Lorle's doorstep unannounced and proposes a trip to Mexico. Dillon's cool, detached style perfectly captures the couple's clinical, Freudian view of relationships, as well as the laconic argot of the 1950s. ("This wasn't love and couldn't be. In the final analysis, it was nothing but transference, he knew that.... He had to admit his own complicity in this, his own failure. What a damn fool he had been.") Her novel is a crisp, intelligent snapshot of an era in which men and women struggle against each other in isolation. Author tour. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Dillon, the well-regarded author of Harry Gold and of several biographies (e.g., A Little Original Sin: The Life and Work of Jane Bowles) brings together three loners in an odd love triangle. Edmond is a troubled, burnt-out psychoanalyst, Lorle a divorced single mother whom he's treating for hysteria, and Vern a hapless fellow living in a shack in California's gold country. Edmond has made a major gaffe by embarking on a loveless love affair with Lorle, who on her best days teeters on the edge of sanity. When his car breaks down in the California desert, Edmond encounters Vern, who eventually hooks up with Lorle in the hopes of reconnecting with Edmond, with whom he mistakenly believes he's made a personal connection. Listless, lethargic Lorle falls into a relationship with Vern, whom she barely knows or likes, and that's the crux of this book, which is more a series of musings than a novel. The characters drift, and the story is bereft of forward movement: there's no march. Though Dillon's prose is spare, supple, and lovely, she doesn't engage the reader; one simply does not care what happens here-and not much does. Recommended for larger fiction collections only.-Jo Manning, Barry Univ., Miami Shores, FL Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

From novelist (Harry Gold, 2000) and biographer Dillon (Paul Bowles, et al.): a spare psychoanalytical tale constructed much like a "serious art film," with ambiguous scenes and loaded dialogue. It's circa 1960, and Lorle, a divorced mother, is in a car with her lover Edmund on an overnight trip to California's gold country. Adoring Edmund, she can't stop analyzing his every gesture, even as he avoids intense dialogue. When the car breaks down, they must leave it at a local garage and fly home. A man named Vern gives them a ride to the airport. Later, Vern invites Edmund to come pan for gold, but Edmund rebuffs him. Back in the city, Lorle sees a note on Edmund's door signed "Love, Carol" and is inflamed with jealousy. Soon Edmund, who was previously Lorle's analyst, breaks off with her and marries Carol because Carol offers him peace. He recommends a new analyst to Lorle, who grows emotionally stronger while Edmund weakens. When he visits Lorle, they make love but she gives him an ultimatum: not to visit again unless he calls by Saturday. Before the deadline, he has a fatal heart attack. Meanwhile, Vern, who, like Edmund, has not emotionally recovered from his WWII experiences, lives cut off from his past-in a cabin-until visited by his boyhood friend Neal. On a return visit to Neal in the city, he meets a woman who's opening a resort in Mexico. His lonely life no longer satisfying, he looks up Lorle and invites her to Mexico. She accepts, though she'd refused to do the same with Edmund, fearing too much strangeness. In Mexico, Vern and Lorle find great sexual chemistry, he now obsessed with her the way she'd been with Edmund, she disengaged just as Edmund had been. Frustrated and angry,Vern storms out. Driving around, he saves some people in fire. When he returns, he and Lorle find a bittersweet peace and head home. Very cerebral and rather obvious.

Kirkus Reviews