Search - Dr. Haggard's Disease (Vintage Contemporaries)

Dr. Haggard's Disease is a gripping novel about forbidden and tragic love. This is a very dark and haunting story that will leave you with feelings of despair and anguish. I was totally engrossed in the story as I followed every catastrophic step that Dr. Haggard took; living his miseries with him. The ending only proves what a broken heart can do to the human mind.

Dr. Haggard shares in intimate details of his illicit romantic fling and obsession for a colleague's wife, a character, by the way, who is flatter than a penny after a steam roller ran over it. McGrath hardly develops Fanny. Why the doc is in love with this cardboard cutout is beyond me.

But obsessed he is and we read page after page of it and I got rather bored with the first 2/3rds of this book. In fact, I thought about putting it down for good.

What kept me reading? "Spike," for one. Who is spike? Why someone is dying and why someone else is dead. McGrath peppers this novel with little mysteries that you just can't let go until you find out what the heck happened.

By midway through the book you begin to wonder about the mental state of the narrator. By the last third of the novel, you can't put it down and you're on a heck of a ride.

McGrath's writing is similar to Kazuo Ishiguro's in terms of high quality and unreliable narrators. In fact, McGrath bests Ishiguro's unreliable narrator by a mile. What's more, McGrath adds lots of gothic elements in his work--bad weather, creepy dilapidated house on a cliff, haunted memories, "ghosts", madness. It's all there, though it's not always obvious at first.

Dr. Haggard is completely twisted.

The ending? Eeegads, yuck, but totally fitting for this story.

I look forward to reading more novels by Patrick McGrath despite my moderate complaints. I hear this isn't his best work, but if I was to grade it, I'd give it a B+.