'By Blood' by Ellen Ullman

By Blood, Ellen Ullman (3.0)

The structure of this book intrigued me – it is basically a story within a story.  The narrator is a nervous mouse of a man with a sketchy past as a college professor who is on leave from his post, apparently due to some type of misconduct.  He rents an office in San Francisco in the 1970’s and quickly realizes that he can hear the psychiatrist next door with her patients. He becomes obsessed with one patient and the majority of the book is about her life and issues as told to the psychiatrist in these sessions.  Her story is interesting enough to keep you reading despite the very creepy nature of the eavesdropping and the relatively unlikable characters all around.  The book is well written and has an interesting premise.  I can’t quite articulate why I did not rate it higher, maybe the creepiness was just too off-putting?