This one’s a memoir written by a talk therapist, unraveling her own journey through therapy alongside the stories of several of her own semi-fictionalized patients (I’ll elaborate on this later). I saw this while scrolling through available books on Libby and borrowed it. I was craving a change of pace (nonfiction when I so often reach for fiction), and it piqued my interest. I did not expect to be as moved as I was.

Several things made this book really work for me. Firstly: on the nuts-and-bolts level of syntax and word choice, it’s well crafted, engaging, and easy to read. At no point was it dry, clunky, or difficult to get through. Secondly: the author was very honest about her messy and flawed humanity, unafraid to share it, acknowledge it, or poke gentle fun at herself without being unkind–which made me trust that I would get to see her perspective evolve and improve over the course of the book to the current-day narrator’s. This mattered because I couldn’t empathize with her “presenting issue” or some of her initial behavior very well–and that’s probably at least partially a “me” thing! My gut reaction to her was, perhaps, a smidge judgmental.

However, my third and most favorite thing about this book was how it balanced the author’s narrative with the narratives of her patients: how they evolved and grew, how one confronted impending death while another struggled with personal connection and emotional vulnerability. As with the author, they came across as messy and human, and they grew on me the more I learned about them and the more they developed and evolved on the page. They had stories and journeys that simultaneously warmed and cracked my heart. And the author managed to dovetail all these different stories thematically and connect them to her own journey. It flowed naturally and felt cohesive.

This—the patient characters (and the author’s own therapist)—is where the memoir blurs the line between nonfiction and fiction.

The author could not breach doctor-patient confidentiality, so she changed names and details and in some cases combined aspects of different patients into one new character. She pulled heavily from real people for her book, but she remixed them. Which is what fiction writers do sometimes! We steal inspiration from real life and mix it into our imagination stews. We just go heavier on the imagination and remixing.

I’m used to thinking of fiction and nonfiction as discrete and opposing categories, so it was interesting to read a book that challenges that dichotomy. I’m still chewing on it. I just thought that was neat. Anyway, that’s a tangent.

I will note that the therapist’s perspective and treatment modalities bear hints of psychodynamic theory; i.e., she tends to be interested in how early experiences may have shaped her patients at subconscious levels and tries to understand the roots of their behavior through that lens. If psychodynamic theory’s not your thing, that’s fair. It’s not my thing.

Despite that, I found this book an interesting, moving, thought-provoking, and enjoyable read. So if you’re intrigued by this mostly-nonfictional memoir that delves into a therapist’s perspective both as therapist and patient, I recommend checking it out!