Rating: 
Summary: Love song
Review: The famous French novelist Paul Michel lived a glamorously unconstrained life, much like his books, until the death of Michel Foucault in 1984. Soon after, he snapped and attempted murder, and was incarcerated in an asylum. Our narrator is writing his thesis on Paul Michel's fiction, and with the urging of his alarmingly intense girlfriend, he sets out to find the man behind the myth and fiction. Travelling through France and finding the lost writer in a hospital, the young man finds himself seduced further by Paul Michel's sharp personality and sets out to free the man he loves from his physical prison, but what of the writer's mental prison? "Hallucinating Foucault" is a fiery confession of love between reader and writer, of the allure of the passionately mad, of living beyond consequences. Like each of the characters, we readers find ourselves seduced by story and falling in love with words, and bereft when the book ends. Patricia Duncker entrances us with this magnificent and potent story of literature, madness, love, and inner darkness.
Rating: 
Summary: a little disturbing
Review: This is one of the most intriguing books I have ever read. It explores the underrated relationship between reader and writer by setting up a story in which a PhD student makes a journey to investigate fictional French novelist, Paul Michel, who is institutionalized for insanity. The relationship they have is a little strange, but it makes the book a little more thought-provoking.This book does not owe its success to an action-packed plot but to the deep complexities and philosophies it explores. At times, the passion that the main character has for Michel is slightly disturbing, but it only strengthens and furthers theme. I thought this book was fascinating and profound without being difficult to read.
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