Mount Misery: A Novel.

SHEM, Samuel (Stephen Bergman).

Item Number: 60037

New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1997.

First edition of this novel from the author of the classic work The House of God. Octavo, original half cloth. Warmly inscribed by the author on the title page to an associate of his. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Ruth Ross.

Anyone who has read Samuel Shem's previous novel, The House of God, will be familiar with Dr. Roy Basch, the protagonist of Mount Misery. When last seen, Dr. Basch was completing a grueling residency; Mount Misery finds him beginning his psychiatric training at an upscale New England mental hospital. His introduction to the myriad forms of therapy available today--everything from Freudian psychoanalysis to psychopharmacology--provides Mr. Shem with plenty of blackly humorous grist for his mill. In this hospital, apparently, you need a score card to tell the doctors from the patients.