Book 49: "The Rapture" by Liz Jensen
Sunday, December 12th, 2010 19:33![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeI have gleaned this much from my fraught fellow workers: I've been assigned Bethany Krall as one of my main cases because no one else wants to deal with her. As the newcomer, I have no choice in the matter. Bethany has been labeled intractable by everyone who has dealt with her so far, with the exception of Joy McConey, whose notes are not in the file - very possibly because she never wrote any. While I'm not exactly nervous about having Bethany Krall on my list, I am not enthusiastic either. My perspective on physical violence has shifted since my accident. I now want to avoid it at all costs, and have taken every possible measure to do so, with the exception of having my strangulation-length hair cut short, because I'm vain about it. But perhaps with Bethany Krall on my list I'll be visiting the hairdresser after all: according to the case notes, my new charge is something of an extremist in the aggression department.
What I like about Liz Jensen is that her books are all unique - she's not one of those authors who keeps on writing the same book over and over again. In this one, a psychotic teenage girl, who has been incarcerated in a secure psychiatric hospital after murdering her mother, starts predicting catastrophes such as eruptions and earthquakes after her ECT sessions. Her previous therapist has been suspended for getting sucked into Bethany's 'fantasies', and now her new therapist, wheelchair-bound Gabrielle Fox, is also starting to believe her.
Gabrielle starts a relationship with a local physicist, Frazer Melville, who becomes convinced that one of Bethany's visions shows an event that could exacerbate global warming and cause devastation on a global scale. Their fight to prevent the accident that will tip the planet into chaos, takes place over an unbearably hot summer and autumn, against a background of rising religious fundamentalism, and establishment disbelief.
It's a pity that Gabrielle is not a more sympathetic character and that her actions and relationship with Fraser Melville do not really ring true. She is still severely traumatised by the accident that left her paralysed, and I think that her previous employers were right in saying that she was not ready to return to work. She blows minor events out of all proportion and does not believe that Fraser Melville really loves her (maybe that accounts for the strange way she always refers to him by both his names).
What I like about Liz Jensen is that her books are all unique - she's not one of those authors who keeps on writing the same book over and over again. In this one, a psychotic teenage girl, who has been incarcerated in a secure psychiatric hospital after murdering her mother, starts predicting catastrophes such as eruptions and earthquakes after her ECT sessions. Her previous therapist has been suspended for getting sucked into Bethany's 'fantasies', and now her new therapist, wheelchair-bound Gabrielle Fox, is also starting to believe her.
Gabrielle starts a relationship with a local physicist, Frazer Melville, who becomes convinced that one of Bethany's visions shows an event that could exacerbate global warming and cause devastation on a global scale. Their fight to prevent the accident that will tip the planet into chaos, takes place over an unbearably hot summer and autumn, against a background of rising religious fundamentalism, and establishment disbelief.
It's a pity that Gabrielle is not a more sympathetic character and that her actions and relationship with Fraser Melville do not really ring true. She is still severely traumatised by the accident that left her paralysed, and I think that her previous employers were right in saying that she was not ready to return to work. She blows minor events out of all proportion and does not believe that Fraser Melville really loves her (maybe that accounts for the strange way she always refers to him by both his names).
