The Strange Case of Jane O.: A Novel
In this spellbinding and provocative novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Miracles, a young mother is struck by sudden and puzzling psychological symptoms that illuminate the mysterious dimensions of the human mind—and of love.
A Belletrist Book Club Pick
A year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. Three days after her first visit to a psychiatrist, Jane suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.
Are Jane’s strange experiences the result of being overwhelmed by motherhood, or are they manifestations of a long-buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died twenty years ago and who warns her of a disaster ahead? Jane’s symptoms lead her psychiatrist ever deeper into the farthest reaches of her mind and cause him to question everything he thinks he knows about so-called reality—including events in his own life.
Karen Thompson Walker’s profound and beautifully written novel is both a speculative mystery about memory, identity, and fate and a mesmerizing literary puzzle about the bonds of love—between mother and child, between a man and a woman, and among those we’ve lost but who may still be among us.
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Community Reviews
Doctor Henry Byrd is a depressed psychiatrist practicing in New York City. Doctor Byrd is one of the main characters in the novel, The Strange Case of Jane O. by Karen Thompson Walker. A patient named Jane Olsen comes to visit Doctor Byrd for a session, but she leaves before the session begins. Three days later, Doctor Byrd receives a phone call from “the emergency room at New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist” (Walker 6). Jane Olsen was found by “a maintenance worker found her early that morning-unconscious on a field in Prospect Park” (Walker 6). Part of the novel is told from the point of view of Doctor Byrd, and part is written as a record by Jane Olsen. Doctor Byrd held a prestigious position at the fictional Haversheim Institute, which, in the novel, is “one of the more prestigious centers for the study of human psychology and psychiatry” (Walker 123). After a personal tragedy described in the book, Doctor Byrd becomes interested in the field of psychology known as the “anomalous experience” (Walker 126). Doctor Byrd is interested in the scientific study of “what the ancients might have called a way of seeing” (Walker 258). Doctor Byrd was forced to resign by the fictional Haversheim Institute for unscientific errors in his research. Meeting Jane Olsen reawakens Doctor Byrd's interest in this research. The book reminded me of a fictional psychiatrist interviewing the Marvel Character of Scarlet Witch. The Strange Case of Jane O. is a well-written novel.