This book begins like a novel: 'A woman attends a funeral. The coffin is lowered into the grave. A man approaches her and says: "He was not your father." ' But the reader's expectation of continuous narrative is excited only to be disrupted; Eric Rhode prefers to work in discrete sections of speculation, each independently, often curiously titled - 'Father into Foetus', 'Eyes Pregnant with a Mother's Babies'. This method of organisation is reminiscent of the collections of brief, aphoristic essays by Theodor Adorno, although Eric Rhode's intellectual method is rather less rigorous than Adorno's. Rhode's speculation centres on work as a psychiatrist in a puerperal breakdown unit - that is, a place where women are sent who have gone mad in connection with the process of childbirth. However, his scope extends far beyond the specificity of his book's title.

LRB 19 May 1988 | PDF Download