Rating: 
Summary: Disproportionate efforts.
Review: I found the groundwork-laying portion of the novel to be overly long, with insufficient compelling reading, up until almost the half way part of the book. My favorite parts in the second half were too short and quick to conclude. Many nights of casual reading at start, followed by hungry reading marathon at end. Strong technique and good background research. Careful about who I reccommend this book too.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant, Deep
Review: I'm a psychologist, and especially enjoy books with psychological content. This book provides remarkable insight into psychoanalytic thought and human complexity and fallibility. It's interesting and a good read, actually quite exciting at some points. I loved it!
Rating:
Summary: Incredible, incredible, incredible - but not for everyone.
Review: I'm a voracious reader, as well as a literary snob with ridiculously high expectations, and I must say this is one of the best 5 works of fiction I've read in my life. Words like "vast," "sweeping," and "epic" come to mind. Also "brilliant," "amazing," and "genius." It's enormously entertaining and impossible to put down. It's 700 pages and I'm still dying for more when it's done. I'm left with that wistful feeling you sometimes get when a book is finished and you have to face the fact that the main character isn't a real person.However, psychology is my field, and I've noticed that non-psych-types tend to find this book pretentious, pedantic, or silly. If you don't have an interest in or feel for psychology, you may not enjoy it. I frankly can't imagine how a reader would even understand the book without a good familiarity with psychology, given how full the book is of jargon and psych concepts. In this sense the book may be alienating to many readers. In my opinion, the author doesn't make much of an effort to make the content accesible to people who don't have a good understanding of concepts like projection, transference, sublimation, or the id. However, if you're "in the know," or just want to be, this book is exquisitely pleasurable. The fact that it reads as a book written by a psychologist for psychologists makes it even more delicious. You don't have to trudge through tiring explanations; he assumes you understand everything, and doesn't hesitate to leap right into the complicated stuff. You may even find that, like me, your own beliefs and theories are challenged and expanded by Yglesias. This book reminds me quite a bit of The Name of the Rose, another of my top 5 all-time greatest. Remember Eco's long passages in Latin and abundant references to medieval obscurities? Both Eco and Yglesias assume you're up to speed on the subject matter, and they don't bother trying to walk you through it. If you're an aspiring polymath, an intellectual binge eater, or just someone who loves a challenge, I think you'd adore both of these books. (If you didn't major in psych or medieval history, you'll feel like you deserve 16 credit hours in each just for reading them.) (Another author who writes like this is Pynchon - not the same friendly style and engrossing plot, but the same kind of thick erudition you feel like you need an encyclopedia just to get through.)
Rating:
Summary: Incredible, incredible, incredible - but not for everyone.
Review: I'm a voracious reader, as well as a literary snob with ridiculously high expectations, and I must say this is one of the best 5 works of fiction I've read in my life. Words like "vast," "sweeping," and "epic" come to mind. Also "brilliant," "amazing," and "genius." It's enormously entertaining and impossible to put down. It's 700 pages and I'm still dying for more when it's done. I'm left with that wistful feeling you sometimes get when a book is finished and you have to face the fact that the main character isn't a real person. However, psychology is my field, and I've noticed that non-psych-types tend to find this book pretentious, pedantic, or silly. If you don't have an interest in or feel for psychology, you may not enjoy it. I frankly can't imagine how a reader would even understand the book without a good familiarity with psychology, given how full the book is of jargon and psych concepts. In this sense the book may be alienating to many readers. In my opinion, the author doesn't make much of an effort to make the content accesible to people who don't have a good understanding of concepts like projection, transference, sublimation, or the id. However, if you're "in the know," or just want to be, this book is exquisitely pleasurable. The fact that it reads as a book written by a psychologist for psychologists makes it even more delicious. You don't have to trudge through tiring explanations; he assumes you understand everything, and doesn't hesitate to leap right into the complicated stuff. You may even find that, like me, your own beliefs and theories are challenged and expanded by Yglesias. This book reminds me quite a bit of The Name of the Rose, another of my top 5 all-time greatest. Remember Eco's long passages in Latin and abundant references to medieval obscurities? Both Eco and Yglesias assume you're up to speed on the subject matter, and they don't bother trying to walk you through it. If you're an aspiring polymath, an intellectual binge eater, or just someone who loves a challenge, I think you'd adore both of these books. (If you didn't major in psych or medieval history, you'll feel like you deserve 16 credit hours in each just for reading them.) (Another author who writes like this is Pynchon - not the same friendly style and engrossing plot, but the same kind of thick erudition you feel like you need an encyclopedia just to get through.)
Rating:
Summary: Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil
Review: I've read over 5,000 books in my life, and Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil is by far the best that I have EVER read. The only unfortunate thing about coming across Rafael Yglesias and his brilliant work is that all of his other works seem to be out of print, and I can't get more of him.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful
Review: It is joyous to find a book of such intelligence and moral sensitivity; a book devoid of the obvious in its plotting and philosophy. It is unlike any other book I have read and reasserts how moving and enlightening and good a great novel can be.
Rating:
Summary: Evil is in the hearts and minds of men and women.
Review: Makes you think about all kinds of childhood terrors and how that turns you into the person you are...And to overcome what happened and be a happy, decent human being without you hurting the people you love in the same way you were hurt. Ygliesias knows the evil that lurks in the hearts of men (and women)
Rating:
Summary: A great well written romp--intrigue and depth.
Review: One of the best books I've read. Great character's with all you might need in a book--depth, page turning, can't put it down story. Insights on two different cultures and one way someone handles a painful child hood. Humor. I has a mystery, a tale of power and pain, of two American cultures, a tale of a childhood that helps create a brilliant psychiatrist. It's too complicated to describe-read it if you want a dense page turner with interesing characters.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible, incredible, incredible - but not for everyone.
Review: The first and second divisions of the book are incredibly well written. The dialogue, settings and explanations of the genuinely awful things that occur to the main character and his patient are enthralling. The reason I can't rate this novel higher is that the final third of the book, while interesting, does not capture me as being in sync with the rest of the novel. We are supposed to believe that Dr. Neruda, a man who spent most of his life up until that point helping children who suffered tortures, would behave in a basically evil way to 'cure' two socially unredeemable characters. I can't buy it and frankly, I don't think the author was very good at describing his concept of evil. According to this author, the likes of Hitler and Stalin weren't evil, but the two businesspeople Neruda hunts after in a chilling manner are. Strange, but true. Granted, these characters are incredibly dislikeable, and Halley in particular is the least engaging character in the book. Perhaps Yglesias' failure to make these two characters intriguing is what emotionally distanced me from the finale of the novel. I was left thinking, is the author trying to show that evil is as evil does, that there is a certain banality and randomness to true evil? If so, aren't those obvious points already? The characters that are built up and introduced in parts 1 and 2 of the novel were fantastic and quite real. What Yglesias does to some of them in part 3 is deeply boring.
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking but ultimately shallow
Review: The first and second divisions of the book are incredibly well written. The dialogue, settings and explanations of the genuinely awful things that occur to the main character and his patient are enthralling. The reason I can't rate this novel higher is that the final third of the book, while interesting, does not capture me as being in sync with the rest of the novel. We are supposed to believe that Dr. Neruda, a man who spent most of his life up until that point helping children who suffered tortures, would behave in a basically evil way to 'cure' two socially unredeemable characters. I can't buy it and frankly, I don't think the author was very good at describing his concept of evil. According to this author, the likes of Hitler and Stalin weren't evil, but the two businesspeople Neruda hunts after in a chilling manner are. Strange, but true. Granted, these characters are incredibly dislikeable, and Halley in particular is the least engaging character in the book. Perhaps Yglesias' failure to make these two characters intriguing is what emotionally distanced me from the finale of the novel. I was left thinking, is the author trying to show that evil is as evil does, that there is a certain banality and randomness to true evil? If so, aren't those obvious points already? The characters that are built up and introduced in parts 1 and 2 of the novel were fantastic and quite real. What Yglesias does to some of them in part 3 is deeply boring.
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