Vienna Triangle by Brenda Webster
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(Paperback)
- Pub. Date: January 2009
- 240pp
- Sales Rank: 231,416
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: January 2009
- Publisher: Wings Press
- Format: Paperback, 240pp
- Sales Rank: 231,416
- ISBN-13: 9780916727505
- ISBN: 0916727505
Synopsis
A young woman named Kate explores her historical connection to the development of Freudian theory and the early beginnings of psychoanalysis in this mystery rooted in the past. Based on real facts concerning the pivotal figures in the development of modern psychology, the complicated lives of Sigmund Freud, his colleague Helene Deutsch, and his rival Victor Tausk are carefully reconstructed to show how their interpersonal intricacies may have led to conspiracy and deceit in the writing of early 20th-century history. When Kate realizes that Tausk was her grandfather, she begins to uncover the details around his mysterious suicide. Only as Kate uncovers the truth is she able to make important decisions about her own future.
Publishers Weekly
Webster's fourth novel is an involving, if overly mannered, literary mystery centered around an ambitious young woman's unknown ancestry, the love life of Sigmund Freud and the death of Freud's rival, Viktor Tausk. A chance run-in with legendary psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch, once a member of Freud's inner circle, sends young American scholar Kate Berg on a journey to uncover the familial roots her mom has long kept hidden. Through Helene, Kate discovers secrets that tie Freud to her long-lost grandfather; the chaotic story of Freud, Tausk and their fight over the alluring Lou Andreas-Salomé, unreels with the Vietnam War raging in the background, immersing Kate and readers in two generations of love and loss. Both smart and charming, Webster's latest delves into the history of psychology with sordid details and a surprising conclusion, in which Kate may lose more than she gains.
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Biography
Brenda Webster is a renowned novelist, a critic, and a translator. She is the author of two literary critical studies, a memoir, and the novels The Beheading Game, Paradise Farm, and Sins of the Mothers. She lives in Berkeley, California.
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An engaging read for the couchby Anonymous
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November 02, 2009: I was completely engaged by this moving feminist adventure about uncovering family secrets. During the 1960s, several distinctive characters including the young woman Kate struggle with how much or how little they should reveal about themselves, important in the age of Twitter and Facebook. Novelist Brenda Webster delicately pokes around characters' family and professional hurts that may be better left alone. Against this personal backdrop, Vienna Triangle also examines how Freud influenced his contemporaries on personal and professional levels, leading perhaps to the suicide of fellow psychoanalyst and disciple Viktor Tausk. Webster brings Freud, the iconic explorer of the subconscious, down to earth by showing him to be an all-too-human manipulative, threatened secret-keeper in his own life. The creative structure of the novel, particularly the self-examination of Tausk's diary entries, puts the reader through the same process that Kate is going through. I have always admired writers who can accomplish that feat. Vienna Triangle is a great book to wrap your soul and psyche around.
Secrets of Freud's inner circleby espinosa
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October 11, 2009: In this intriguing work Brenda Webster explores the darker side of Freud through focusing on Tausk, his most brilliant disciple, who committed suicide in 1918. She does this through two stories: In the first, set in the 1960s, Kate, who is doing research for her Ph.D. in Psychology, discovers Tausk's diaries by chance. Although the novel is based on facts, the diaries are entirely Webster's creation. They are pitch perfect, almost uncannily so. Webster captures the tone of Tausk's personality and his epoch while describing Kate's contemporary world in a captivating way that functions as a means for exposing secrets that will bring unexpected bearings on her own life.
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