A Curable Romantic
Nov 13, 2010
A Curable Romantic
Author: Joseph Skibell
Hardcover: 608 pages
Publisher: Algonquin Books; (September 7, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1565129296
A big hearty book to settle in with and stay a while.
Starting in the late 1800s, this is the story of Jakob Sammelsohn, who leaves his Austrian village at a young age, after enduring two arranged marriages by the age of 12, to settle in the big city of Vienna. He's an inquisitive soul who's looking for the meaning of many things in his life.
He meets a woman who just happens to be on her way to becoming one of Freud's most famous patients and there begins the story of how a great part of Jakob's life was intertwined with Freud, the Esperanto movement and his desire to find true love.
Throw in the Warsaw Ghetto during The Holocaust, the ghost of his 12 year old bride from his village who feels abandoned by him and the many neuroses that surround everyone he knows and you have a very interesting story that will keep you busy for a while.
This is not a fast read and there are parts you might need to read twice to really grasp what is being said, but if the intellectual bent of the story and the science behind Freud's teachings interests you, this is a book you don't want to miss.
