Manhattan, 1909. On the morning after Sigmund Freud arrives in New York on his first - and only - visit to the United States, a stunning debutante is found bound and strangled in her penthouse apartment above Broadway. The following night, another beautiful heiress, Nora Acton, is discovered tied to a chandelier in her parents' home, viciously wounded and unable to speak or to recall her ordeal. Soon Freud and his American disciple, Stratham Younger, are enlisted to help Miss Acton recover her memory and to piece together the killer's identity. It is a riddle that will lead them on a thrilling journey - into the darkest places of the city, and of the human mind.I chose this book largely because my dad had read it and because it was the winner of the Galaxy Book Awards' Best Read... and I liked Galaxy chocolate... Oh and it has Freud in it! In the end, we all had interesting thoughts on this widely credited novel but, in brief:
The backdrop against Manhattan’s emerging skyline and cosmopolitanism was a hit. I'd recently come back from a brief trip to NYC and had been on a tour at the Tenement Museum, which allowed you to follow a poor immigrant family's life at this time, so it was particularly fun for me to read! Admittedly, this isn't about immigrants... but Freud was an outsider and he definitely gets treated like one...
Littlemore, one of the junior detectives on the case, was a favourite in terms of characters and it had some exciting moments, too, especially when a couple of the characters become very literally under pressure…
The main concern was its length and just how much was crammed in to its 400+ pages. So much seemed to happen and little really added much to the central plot. It was clear that Rubenfeld was fascinated by Freud and his history and, while his knowledge was impressive, he ended up seeming to show this off a bit...
Aside from that, we all enjoyed the book and gave it a healthy 7/10
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