The Monkey Puzzle Tree

Albert Stray is librarian and manager of the Streetsville Public
Library.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA funded brainwashing experiments
conducted by a Montreal psychiatrist, Dr. Ewen Cameron. The guinea pigs
consisted of unwitting (primarily female) patients, both American and
Canadian. One of Dr. Cameron’s victims was the author’s mother. In
this gripping fictionalized account, Nickson combines the experiences of
her own family with a massive amount of research into the UKULTRA
project to relate a little-publicized facet of the Cold War.

Nickson’s protagonist, Catherine, is a burned-out 37-year-old
Canadian journalist living and working in New York City. Her brother’s
attempted suicide in Vancouver begins the exorcism of the demons that
stand between her and her mother, Victoria. At the urging of her
brother, Catherine goes to Washington for a mysterious rendezvous with a
lawyer. As the story of broken lives and wasted potential unfolds, the
terrifying callousness and complicity of the Canadian government is
revealed. The novel effectively incorporates flashbacks to Catherine’s
childhood in rural Quebec.

Nickson is a skilful writer. I am thinking of the exhilarating word
pictures she creates in describing a sailboat race on a storm-swept
lake; the tension in Joe Raub’s law office as lawyers grapple with
people’s lives; the suspense as Catherine confronts a government agent
in her mother’s house; the agony of Victoria as she is subjected to
LSD and sleep deprivation in the Sleep Room at Montreal’s Royal
Victoria Hospital. Early on in the novel, a CIA general counsel remarks,
in reference to Dr. Cameron’s patients, “no one gives a damn about
those wrecks.” After reading this book, you will.