A writer, “GMB”, interested in a controversial 1960s therapist called Collins Braithwaite, receives some journals allegedly written by a patient of Braithwaite’s. “Case Study” is the book written by GMB about Braithwaite, combining the writer’s research and the contents of the journals.

The crimes of psychiatry are legion, but they can mostly be attributed to a single cause: the idea that the therapist knows more than the patient.

A totally engrossing and cleverly structured novel. As a reader, though, I was disappointed with the ending. I needed more clarity. The Guardian also comments on how engrossing this novel is: “This is a novel that is entertaining and mindfully engrossing in equal measure.”. Kirkus, however, has the opinion that “the author’s layering of his fictional characters’ unverifiable testimony, frank deception, and self-aggrandizing half-truths with significant historical figures of the time—like R.D. Laing and Dirk Bogarde—and GMB’s omnipresent frame narrative overlap to the extent that it’s hard to tell not just whose perception to trust, but which among all these counterfeit identities is real”. This opinion is in contrast to the Financial Times: “Burnet’s greatest achievement (with this novel) is making you care about a woman whose name you don’t know, a doctor you don’t want to know and a story you can’t trust. Constantly inventive, caustically funny and surprisingly moving, this is one of the finest novels of the year.”

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