Fine

With the same brilliant meld of zany humor, human emotion, and high truth that made his first novel, The House of God, a medical classic, Samuel Shem, himself a psychiatrist, plunges headlong into the world of contemporary psychoanalysis, bringing to it all the same passion, comedy, and probing intent. In Fine we see psychoanalysis fifty years after Freud, its bizarre rigidity, its potential greatness. A rich, many-leveled tale told with Shem's magical mix of the serious and the hilarious, Fine is an erotic love story ("all love stories are about three people"); a murder mystery (who is killing the shrinks of Boston?); a novel of modern relationships; and a tale of awesome self-discovery. In short, it is about life.