Heroes Not Zombies

Pharmakon, by Dirk Wittenborn, ( ISBN 978-0747598107), is a good read. It’s a novel which tells the story of one American family, starting with a focus on the father, a psychologist, then following the story of his youngest son. The territory of the book is the treatment of mental health, and in some ways, that reminded me of Sebastian Faulk’s “Human Traces“. However, despite the fact that both novels make you think about psychiatry as a therapy, it’s a more modern novel than Human Traces, taking a focus on drugs. You could tell that from the title I’m sure! In fact, by focusing on drugs taken to alter mental states, Wittenborn explores and entwines both “therapeutic” and “recreational” use of drugs.

Dr. William T. Friedrich wonders if it is possible to find a drug which will produce human happiness. The idea that this might be possible is prompted by two things. Firstly, he is horrified by the contemporary 1950s psychiatric treatments, finding psycho-surgery barbaric and psycho-analysis ineffective. Secondly, he comes across the use of a plant by tribes in New Guinea to alter mental states. He persuades a colleague to set up a clinical trial of this plant extract and see if they can prescribe happiness. Things, of course, don’t go according to plan, and one of the volunteers, a deeply disturbed young man called Caspar, after an initial apparently astonishingly good response to the drug, turns homicidal and sets out to kill the two researchers.

For the rest of the novel, Caspar haunts the Friedrich family. His crimes result in him being committed to secure psychiatric care for the rest of his life, and to Dr Friedrich and his wife having another child, Zach. Zach’s story leads into recreational drug use and its sorry consequences. Friedrich himself goes on to become a successful consultant to major drug companies helping them to create and market a number of anti-depressants and other psycho-active products.

As you might imagine, this is not a happy story, but it’s engaging and it also makes you think not only about psychiatry and drug companies, but also about human happiness – what is it and can it ever be achieved by using chemicals?

The drug company thread of the narrative echoed some of the themes of Popco but this is not a novel about drug companies. It’s a novel about life, mental health care, the place which drugs (prescribed and illegal) play in our society, and, ultimately, it’s a novel about families and happiness.

I found the last paragraph of the book immensely satisfying. I won’t spoil the story for you, but suffice it to say that at the beginning of the story, Friedrich wonders if its possible for a drug to produce happiness, and at the end, he’s wondering if it’s possible to find a drug which will produce tears.

I enjoy books for different reasons. Popco, by Scarlett Thomas, (ISBN 978-1847673350) is one of several novels I’ve read this summer and which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. It strikes me the novels I’ve read are all very different and I wondered if maybe I enjoyed such diversity in the same way I enjoy the company of diversely different people.

When it comes to a novel my main prerequisite is that it’s a good story. I love a good story, and this one drew me in right from the start. Popco, is an imaginary multinational toy company, supposed to be the third largest in the world, and the narrative takes place in a country retreat out in the wilds in southern England, where a select group of Popco employees are receiving classes in the mindsets of teenage girls to try and come up with some new products to crack this notoriously difficult sector of the market.

The narrator is a quirky, bright, highly intelligent young woman. She heads up one of Popco’s sections related to producing kits for children who want adventure – spy kits, code kits, survival kits and so on. She’s not someone who really fits in very easily with others, and I imagined her to be a bit like Chloe O’Brian from “24” – geeky, socially clunky, very bright, and interesting! The novel interweaves the story of her early life brought up by her grandparents, one a maths genius, and the other a professional code-breaker, with her present day experience on the idea-generating retreat for Popco.

I think it was the rich and varied subject matter which really hooked me in this novel. I loved all the explanations about code-making and code-breaking (took me right back to my early teenage years), and I enjoyed the discussions about prime numbers and mathematical patterns. Also, almost as an aside, I loved the way she used homeopathy for self-care and explained the homeopathic method so clearly but modestly. What disturbed me most about the novel was the way the company worked. I don’t mean the structure. I mean the way it operated in the world, dividing children into demographic segments, codifying them according to their interests, desires, and maturity, then producing marketing campaigns to sell loads of branded merchandise and toys to them. I found that all scarily believable. It was all so manipulative, and slick. I think it’s the fact that it was a toy company targeting children that made it especially uncomfortable. I’m pretty cynical about marketing anyway, but this book just made me wake up again a bit, and see behind the TV schedules, comic and magazine tie-ups and marketing campaigns.

There are a couple of interwoven plots which drive the book along. One about a treasure map (yes, really!), and one about a  fightback against globalisation and consumption. I enjoyed both of those plots, and I’m not going to reveal any detail about either of them (in case you decide to read the book)

I like novels which make me think, and ones where I learn something too, but I mostly like novels where the author tells a good story.