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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Finding the Real George, 7 Oct 2003
Hitting an officer usually lands you in the stockade, not the psychiatric ward. But for 'George Smith' (not his real name), the officers at this base decided this would be an appropriate place. As the overworked ward was back in the States, a long ways from the fisticuffs, and the battered officer was killed shortly thereafter, it perhaps can be understood how George was locked up for three months without anyone seeing him. When he does finally become the object of attention, the battle cry is to get him out of there as quickly as possible, so the psychiatrist's time can be more usefully spent on those who have real problems. All that's required is to write up a nice sounding diagnosis, declare him cured, and discharge him. In pursuit of something on which to base his diagnosis, the psychiatrist asks George to write up his life history, in third person if that will help him tell his story truthfully. It is here, with this autobiography, that Sturgeon starts to show just how brilliant a writer he was. Sturgeon often portrayed some the world's less fortunate in his stories, always with empathy and a way of making his readers see the portrayed character as a person, not as an object. Just so here, as George's story is deftly told, simple and in the appropriate vernacular of a poor kid of somewhat limited education. George was raised by a drunkard, abusive father and invalid mother, and his only relief from the abuse was his walks in the local woods, where he learned to hunt small game. As he matures, he becomes involved with Anna, eight years his senior. Eventually, in trying to please his father, he ran afoul of the law, and was placed in a juvenile home, and eventually joined the Army, where he seemed to fit quite well, until the incident with the officer. At this point, I felt that here was a person who had been inappropriately placed in a mental institution, a quiet, reserved person who had somehow been pushed beyond a breaking point and for once let his anger dominate his actions. Here is where the real story starts, as the psychiatrist, reading George's account, feels there is something missing, something that George hasn't told, and he unfolds the arsenal of tools available to him to try and determine just what is missing. What is finally revealed about George is not only shocking and horrifying to the point of keeping me awake long after I finished this book, but also shows just how superb a job Sturgeon did in crafting George's 'autobiography', as again and again, certain mannerisms of expression, things that were not said, and things that were said but not taken literally are shown to be the keys to the real George. Sturgeon does not need the normal trappings of a horror novel here - there are no ghosts, no voices, no elements of the paranormal - rather we have something that is totally believable, and for that reason it is even more horrifying. For once, psychiatry is shown capable of doing what it is supposed to do, a success story in a field littered with ultimate failures and partial insights, and perhaps this element is the weakest thing here - things go too well, too easily for the psychiatrist. The ending was a little too upbeat, perhaps, and Sturgeon made one slip that I thought was unnecessary, just too obvious, when he revealed that George's real name is 'Bela'. These are minor flaws in an otherwise excellent book that can make you really feel just how horrifying the world and some people who populate it can be. --- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
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by Stieg Larsson
