The Other Side Of You – Salley Vickers
The Other Side of You is a thought provoking and incredibly moving story which I loved…and didn’t love all at the same time. It is the story of a woman, Elizabeth, who is brought to a psychiatric hospital after a failed suicide attempt. She is treated by David, her doctor, and through the course of the story she tells him, eyes are opened all around. David starts to see that he is in a loveless marriage with a narcissistic woman. Elizabeth quietly acknowledges her own folly at resisting true love when it was there, staring her in the face. And both of them recognise a longing for one another which never fully materialises.
The strength of this story is in the fact that every line and paragraph is infused with emotion. There is an almost dream like quality in the narrative which is highlighted by feelings of sorrow, realisation, loss, euphoria and helplessness. The tragedy of it is that the characters, particularly Elizabeth but also David to an extent, only acknowledges the emotion after it is too late to do something about it. As such, the emotions are all suffused with a sense of regret and what if, which ultimately makes the whole feeling of the book one of sadness.
Unfortunately, I found myself frustrated by the unwillingness of Elizabeth to actually open her eyes and see what wonder and chance of happiness she had before her with Thomas. Why did it take until it was too late before she actually recognised what it was he was offering – love, life, acceptance, happiness? I wanted to shake her because of her insistence on returning each time to an evil, manipulative mother-in-law and an emotionally absent husband. She had the opportunity for life and she chose stagnation. But perhaps I shouldn’t have got annoyed – perhaps we all do that in our lives at some stage, most often out of fear, and only realise we have done it later.
I think Vickers shows incredible skill at understanding people – not surprising due to her own career as a psychoanalyst as well as her own experiences of loss and heartbreak in marriage. The language is restrained, refined and yet powerful and although I did feel that sometimes the emotion was a little too intense and therefore started to feel a bit heavy or contrived, I do recognise that this wasn’t a story about people, it was a story about the human condition and those parts of ourselves which we struggle to control. With hindsight, or if you could stand outside of yourself, you can see it. But otherwise you are almost powerless against the pull of feelings and reactions to others.
It is not an uplifting book, but it is one that makes you assess your own life. Elizabeth made a mistake which she no longer has the ability to rectify – by hearing her story, you may prevent it happening for yourself.
Rating: 7/10
ISBN: 978-0007165452
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Year: 2007
Date Finished: 7 January 2010
Pages: 320
