PHARMAKON
Dirk Wittenborn
Bloomsbury, pbk, $37.99
Review by Laura Hewson
What is happiness? And can it be found in a pill? These are the questions up-and-coming psychology professor Will Friedrich wants to answer.
It's 1951. The Korean War is in full swing, electroshock therapy and frontal lobotomies still seem like good ideas, and Friedrich, as he's known, is not a happy man.
He's had to work hard and make sacrifices to get where he is, while the other Yale professors merely coast along on family money and connections.
It's a real challenge then for him to team up with old-money professor Bunny Winton to turn an exotic plant ("gai kau dong", or "the way home") into a pill to cure depression.
The cure seems to work.
It turns paranoid social outcast Casper Gedsic into the type of man he's always dreamed of being friends with, though now he no longer needs friends, just stepping stones.
Inevitably, the experiment ends horribly and the Friedrich family is left reeling.
Pharmakon (meaning in Greek both the cure and the poison) is a book that looks at some tough topics: the treatment of the mentally ill, drug addiction, and the negative impact parents can have on their children.
According to the acknowledgements, Wittenborn's father was also a psychologist. For his sake I can only hope this is not autobiographical.
Friedrich's a wonderful scientist but a terrible father, either conspicuously absent or steering his four children towards his vision of success.
As youngest son Zach says, "If there's brain candy in your medicine cabinet, chances are my father's messed with your head, too."
Wittenborn has, with great efficiency, created a set of deeply flawed characters: the narcissistic Friedrich who is both tremendously insightful and fairly dense about people; Casper, who is way too intelligent and unbalanced to be a good guinea pig; and the Friedrich children, who each have their own way of dealing with Dad.
There are so many different characters and threads in this novel that much potentially good stuff is left unexplored and unexplained.
The quest for artificial happiness that consumes the first half of the book takes a back seat in the second to the Friedrichs' dysfunctional family life. As well as shifting focus, the narration switches to Zach and I have to say I just didn't find him as interesting as his father.
Also, the tension and danger created by Casper in the first half is missing, and the continual proof of how damaged the children have been by their parents is a little wearying.
Spending time with the Friedrichs is unlikely to make you feel any happier, but it may help you appreciate what you have in your own life.
Laura Hewson is online deputy editor for the Otago Daily Times website.
