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Rating: 
Summary: A PROMISING DEBUT
Review: Attesting to the fact that the past can be preamble to the present first time novelist Lisa Gornick offers an intense picture of a family in crisis. Author/psychoanalyst Gornick, currently on the staff of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, has chosen psychiatrists as two of her central characters. Withdrawn, quiet Saul Dubinsky is a psychiatrist haunted by the attempted suicide of one of his patients. What could he have done to have prevented such a desperate act? Tormented, unable to sleep Saul begins to take pills for relief, increasing his consumption until he becomes addicted to drugs. After a break-in at his hospital's pharmacy Saul is arrested, convicted, and sent to jail. He feels he only deserves what has happened to him. Rena, Saul's wife, is both angry and puzzled. She mentally dismembers their marriage and reluctantly confronts her checkered past. Leonard, Saul's father and a retired psychiatrist, assumes the blame for his son's behavior. There is no help to be found with Saul's attorney brother or support from his mother who spends day and night abed complaining of various psychosomatic disorders. Leonard and Rena at first circle each other as they seek to understand Saul, and then become close in their mutual desire to help the man they both love. Gornick draws powerful opening pages but then slides through morasses of introspection that, at times, tend to be repetitive in establishing the identity of each character. Not much action but a great deal of contemplation. Nonetheless, "A Private Sorcery" is a promising debut. - Gail Cooke
Rating:
Summary: A PROMISING DEBUT
Review: Attesting to the fact that the past can be preamble to the present first time novelist Lisa Gornick offers an intense picture of a family in crisis. Author/psychoanalyst Gornick, currently on the staff of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, has chosen psychiatrists as two of her central characters. Withdrawn, quiet Saul Dubinsky is a psychiatrist haunted by the attempted suicide of one of his patients. What could he have done to have prevented such a desperate act? Tormented, unable to sleep Saul begins to take pills for relief, increasing his consumption until he becomes addicted to drugs. After a break-in at his hospital's pharmacy Saul is arrested, convicted, and sent to jail. He feels he only deserves what has happened to him. Rena, Saul's wife, is both angry and puzzled. She mentally dismembers their marriage and reluctantly confronts her checkered past. Leonard, Saul's father and a retired psychiatrist, assumes the blame for his son's behavior. There is no help to be found with Saul's attorney brother or support from his mother who spends day and night abed complaining of various psychosomatic disorders. Leonard and Rena at first circle each other as they seek to understand Saul, and then become close in their mutual desire to help the man they both love. Gornick draws powerful opening pages but then slides through morasses of introspection that, at times, tend to be repetitive in establishing the identity of each character. Not much action but a great deal of contemplation. Nonetheless, "A Private Sorcery" is a promising debut. - Gail Cooke
Rating: 
Summary: A stunning book
Review: I could not put this book down. It is a thrilling journey through the lives of an extended family. In fact, it redefines what family means. Though there is much anguish in the book, it is heartily redeemed as the characters come to terms with their failings and lost dreams and begin to make for themselves real lives, drenched in their own deepmost meanings. This is a book you will really love, so buy it, read it, send it to your friends for Christmas. You will not be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping first novel
Review: This is an astonishing first novel, which reads like the work of a writer truly in stride. It is a gripping psychological drama that has page-turning suspense, intelligent plotting, and rich character portrayals of the highest literary merit. The book takes us from the heady sophistication of New York life to the dramatic hills of France to the textured third-world life of Guatemala. Most of all, though, the book is an epic about the ways we can be deeply unknown to each other, causing great pain, but also how ultimately, we can each rise to our best selves. It is a book of great wisdom and warmth that will appeal, in my opinion, to all intelligent readers. It is one of the best first novels I've ever read and highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Beyond the "Rational"
Review: Weaving her own "Private Sorcery" so that it captures the essence of the inter-play between "real feelings" and "outer appearances", Lisa Gornick challenges the reader to abandon the pretences that shelters us from having to really confront ourselves. Here is where the "rational" and the "irrational" meet and anihilate eachother, leaving only the "Will-to-live-fruitfully" as the reason for activity. What transpires can be surprising and uncomfortable. But so is "becoming free", which is what this book is ultimately all about.
Rating:
Summary: Beyond the "Rational"
Review: Weaving her own "Private Sorcery" so that it captures the essence of the inter-play between "real feelings" and "outer appearances", Lisa Gornick challenges the reader to abandon the pretences that shelters us from having to really confront ourselves. Here is where the "rational" and the "irrational" meet and anihilate eachother, leaving only the "Will-to-live-fruitfully" as the reason for activity. What transpires can be surprising and uncomfortable. But so is "becoming free", which is what this book is ultimately all about.
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