When it’s all in the mind

Do No Harm, Carol Topolski, Penguin/Fig Tree; €15.10

THE novel opens with a quotation from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: ‘the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?’

This sets the tone for the chilling opening chapter, in which a woman invites someone into her home, with devastating consequences. The complex personality of Virginia, the protagonist, (Topolski is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist) is riddled with contradictions — she was an unloved only child of a loveless marriage, and this has damaged her. We are presented with her subjective view during key moments in her childhood. She is plain while her mother is beautiful, exacerbating her piercing loneliness. Her one friend — from a warm and loving family — emigrates to Venezuela, leaving her with Ruby, who appears when it suits her and exercises a disturbing influence over Virginia.

The story moves back and forth through unspecified periods of time in the seventies and goes back to her father’s war experiences and her mother’s love affair with the only man who shows Virginia affection. Told from various perspectives, and moving from first to third person, we observe the unfolding character of a psychologically-fragmented and tragic figure.

From the childhood doctor games with Ruby, when Virginia would ‘operate’ on dead insects, sewing a spider’s legs onto a moth, and wings onto the spider, Virginia grows up to become a brilliant gynaecologist, in spite of her puzzling clumsiness outside the operating theatre.

She is regarded with awe by her peers and colleagues, who consider her their mentor. One of these is Faisal, a Pakistani doctor, who feels that he owes Virginia after his daughter is involved in an accident and she swiftly contacts a renowned neurosurgeon, who flies down as a favour to operate on the child. He is also impressed by the way Virginia helps Gilda, a young and beautiful single mother, to bond with her baby. He doesn’t realise that Virginia visits Gilda at home, so that Gilda becomes dependent on her, even asking her to become her son’s godmother.

With Ruby reminding her to be vigilant, Virginia keeps people at bay, so it is against Ruby’s strenuous objections that Virginia continues to see Gilda. But when Gilda mentions that she is part of a group of people who indulge in deviant sexual experiences and Virginia feels an overwhelming temptation to accept her invitation to join them, Ruby’s advice triumphs over her longing to belong, and she withdraws again. She takes comfort in her only indulgence, food. For three days of the week, she gorges on lavish meals and wines, eating enough for four with each meal. For the rest of the week, she starves herself, self-harms and practises bondage. Perhaps Virginia would have been able to continue to control her compulsions in this way, but secrets come to light on the occasion of her father’s death. These set off catastrophic events that would compromise the most moral of individuals. As an analytical study of a dangerously-unhinged individual whose career gives her access to power over life, this is a gripping, deftly written novel.