Juliette

Caroline M. Hallsworth is a librarian at Cambrian College in Sudbury.

Juliette, by Swiss author Michel Goeldlin, is a novel culled from the medical files of the psychoanalyst who treated the real “Juliette.”

Juliette comes to her psychoanalyst, Dr. Baretti, a terrified, withdrawn woman, scarcely able to cope with the realities of daily living. Her personality and fragments of her past are revealed to the reader, as to Baretti, through a series of conversations and through Juliette’s writings and accounts of her dreams. The reader feels the frustration of Dr. Baretti as he searches for the key that will unlock Juliette’s misery.

While this novel is the story of one woman’s struggle to overcome her abusive past, it also serves as an indictment of those whose “selfish apathy” (p. 54) allows others to be victimized. On the final page of the book, Goeldlin asks, “Aren’t we all surrounded by Juliettes?”