Pharmakon

March 24, 2008
In this ambitious but flawed novel about drug makers and drug takers, Wittenborn (Fierce People
) unfurls the cautionary story of Dr. Will Friedrich, a psychopharmacologist at Yale in 1951, who teams up with a female psychiatrist to test an experimental mood-enhancing drug extracted from a leaf used by New Guinea witch doctors. Will tests the new med on a suicidal freshman, Casper Gedsic, and Casper’s resulting homicidal outbreak will trouble Will for the rest of his life. Zach, the narrator and youngest Friedrich boy (conceived in the wake of Casper’s freakout), comes of age during the tail end of the ’60s, has a truncated brush with writerly success and cops a crippling habit. He and his three siblings end up disappointing Will as their lives run counter to his ambitions for them: daughters Fiona and Lucy forgo lucrative careers for more fulfilling lifestyles (Fiona becomes a painter, Lucy an aid worker), and Willy drops out of prelaw to study art. Unfortunately, the fates of the Friedrich children are of much less dramatic interest than that of their father, and as the novel shifts focus to their travails, this dysfunctional family narrative disappointingly peters out into irresolution.

September 29, 2008
Author and screenwriter Wittenborn's latest novel, a multicharacter, multidecade exploration of pharmacology and murder, is large enough to require two readers for its audio version. Deakins and Hoppe trade off duties—one grainy and slightly ironic, the other orotund and inclined to throwing voices. Both are more than serviceable, underscoring the horror and the comedy of this tale of progress denied with cool detachment and a faintly mocking air. The dual narration splits between the perspectives of Zach Friedrich, son of a famed Yale psychologist, and that of a young man, a former student of Dr. Friedrich's, who is at the center of the book's tragedy. Having two narrators excellently underscores the stark contrast between the two worlds described, which only grow further and further apart as the book progresses. A Viking hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 24).