2 of 2 copies available
—Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train
"Perfect for fans of The Silent Patient." —Booklist
A riveting page-turner that lets us inside the secret world of therapist and patient, where boundaries get crossed, and events spiral out of control. . .
Ruth Hartland is a psychotherapist with years of experience. But professional skill is no guard against private grief. The mother of grown twins, she is haunted by the fact that her beautiful, difficult, fragile son Tom, a boy who never "fit in," disappeared a year and a half earlier. She cannot give up hope of finding him, but feels she is living a kind of half-life, waiting for him to return.
Enter a new patient, Dan—unstable and traumatized—who looks exactly like her missing son. She is determined to help him, but soon, her own complicated feelings, about how she has failed her own boy, cloud her professional judgement. And before long, the unthinkable becomes a shattering reality....
An utterly compelling drama with a timebomb at its core, A Good Enough Mother is a brilliant, beautiful story of mothering, and how to let go of the ones we love when we must.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 30, 2019 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781984843326
- File size: 293168 KB
- Duration: 10:10:45
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from February 11, 2019
As the director of a nationally renowned trauma therapy unit, London psychotherapist Ruth Hartland, the narrator of Thomas’s exceptional debut, most definitely knows better. But from her first glimpse in the waiting room of new patient Dan Griffin, when she momentarily mistakes him for her own troubled son, Tom (who disappeared a year and a half earlier at 17), she feels an instant emotional connection that will threaten her ability to maintain professional boundaries. Thomas, herself a former clinical psychologist with Britain’s National Health Service, hooks the reader with Ruth’s unblinking dual narratives. The first traces her doomed treatment of Dan, during which the pull to see him as a surrogate for Tom blinds her to the depth of his dysfunction and his potential for violence; the second focuses on the guilt-strewn shambles she has allowed her own life to become, including the breakdown of her marriage and estrangement from Tom’s twin sister, Carolyn. Thomas melds astute psychological insight with powerful storytelling in this moving thriller. Agent: Jennifer Joel, ICM.
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