Double Blind.

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta, co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British
Views of Canada, 1880–1914, and author of The Salvation Army and the
Public.

Josh Bozeman is an American psychiatrist in need of psychiatric help to dispel the effects of childhood trauma caused by polio. Now, in the 1970s, he is seconded to a research project called SHIP—the Society for Human Improvement and Potential—and sent to St. John’s, Newfoundland, to carry out the study.

Things get complicated as personal jealousies, love relationships between patient and doctor, and professional doubts begin to turn the project into anything but straightforward research. When Bozeman is forced to return to St. John’s some years later, the endgame is played out in a bizarre and tragic way. The whole novel is complex (perhaps too complex at times), and often a little too clinical in its detail, but there’s no doubt that Hallett is a brilliant novelist—assured, convincing, and stylistically engaging. One wishes the novel were a little more streamlined in its plot and more plausible in its outcome. As it stands, it seems to be almost an aficionado exercise.