Comment

Community comment are the opinions of contributing users. These comment do not represent the opinions of West Vancouver Memorial Library.
Feb 19, 2013
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this stream-of-consciousness novel follows a psychiatrist at a mental hospital in London in 1971. At the same time, we are treated to an account of one of his patients, an octogenarian who's been institutionalized - and catatonic - for 50 years after contracting encephalitis lethargica. His efforts to treat her and glimpses of her youth during a short reawakening alternate with flashbacks to the lives of her brothers and flash-forwards to the doctor in 2010. A complicated read adorned with "snippets of dialects, stylistic flourishes, and inventive phrases loose with meaning" (Publishers Weekly), Umbrella is "mesmerizing" (Boston Globe). Fiction A to Z Newsletter February 2013.