The Other Side of You by Salley Vickers

The Other Side of You
272 pages; Farrar, Straus and Giroux
"It takes faith to love. But perhaps it takes greater faith to be loved." So ruminates psychiatrist David McBride about his patient Elizabeth Cruikshank, a failure at both suicide and romance. David himself has long been haunted by the death of his older brother and feels tangential to his own dispassionate life. Salley Vickers' novel The Other Side of You (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) delicately analyzes the ways in which people deflect happiness—and with a bow to the painter Caravaggio, whose intensely passionate work captivates these two lost souls, examines the subtle colorations of desire.
— Cathleen Medwick