The strange case of Dr Simmons & Dr Glas - Dannie Abse

The story of Dr Robert Simmonds's disastrous infatuation with one of his patients, the young, unhappily married Yvonne Bloomberg, takes place during the post-war utilitarian days of the 1950s. When Yvonne presents her doctor with a Swedish novel about a certain Dr Glas, Robert Simmonds immediately recognises their similarity. 'I Dr. Simmonds' he writes in his diary 'acknowledge such an affinity with you. I understand your loneliness, your non-physical attachment to a woman, a woman who is innocent - and your belief in purity of action, however risky. I live here in 1950, you in a novel published in 1905. And yet you think my thoughts, speak words I could utter, accomplish deeds I might emulate.' The trouble is that the fictional Dr Glas deliberately murders the husband of the one he loved. In this spell-binding novel, Dannie Abse draws on his medical background to create a compelling narrative in which motives and action all come into question.