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.
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Umbrella