CY@CY Says Welcome to my dreamscape. Where a Lim is also a Ling.
Therapy, the debut novel by German author Sebastian Fitzek, has been classified a psychological thriller but it is actually a crime novel about psychology. Published in 2006, it has notched up sales in excess of eight million copies worldwide. In Germany, it knocked off Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code from the top spot on the bestseller list. The author has achieved superstar status in Europe and has been hailed as the German Stephen King for his twisty and very dark psychological thrillers. Quite an achievement!
Eminent psychiatrist Viktor Larenz brings her 12-year old daughter Josy to see allergy specialist Dr Grohlkean, hoping to find answers for a mysterious illness that a long list of specialists have failed to identify. After watching her daughter enter the doctor’s room, he patiently waits outside in the waiting room. But when his daughter fails to re-emerge, he tries to to open the door to the doctor’s room only to discover it locked. An intensive search fails to find Josy.
Severely traumatized by the loss of his daughter, Viktor becomes obsessed with tracking her down. In the process, he sees his marriage and his practice collapse as he loses the line between reality and madness. He retreats to his holiday home on the isolated North Sea island of Parkum.
Then a beautiful woman Anna Glass pays him a visit, asking him to treat her. She is a novelist who suffers from an unusual form of schizophrenia: all the characters she creates for her books become real to her. In her last novel she has written about a young girl with an unknown illness who has disappeared without a trace.
Does Anna’s delusions describe Josy’s last days? Reluctantly, Viktor agrees to take on her therapy in a final attempt to uncover the truth behind his daughter’s disappearance. Is Anna really a schizophrenic suffering from delusions, or is she somehow involved in Josy’s disappearance? Very soon the therapy sessions take a dramatic turn as the past is dragged back into the light – with terrifying consequences.
Led into a maze of dead ends and unexpected turns, it becomes impossible to separate truth and fiction. This book suckers you in, leaving you gasping with the final twists.