The Phantom Of The Opera
Author: Gaston Leroux
Read by: Alexander Adams
On the screen adn on Broadway, this classic tale of romance an horror has thrilled audiences all over the world. No director in his right mind could refuse the gothic eeirness of Gaston Leroux's most famous novel. Now, experience the work that began it all, the story of an ingenious artist driven mad by injustice and love. Deep in the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House, a masked monster lurks, dreaming of the day he'll capture a beautiful singer and keep her in his own twilit world. But the road to realizing his fantasy is strewn with fear and murder. What evil will the phantom perpertrate when the curtain rises again? Once you hear the original tale, you'll discover why this century-old novel still stirs our imaginations today.
Personal Notes:
Its a great movie, Great play, but could not get through this book-With early 1900s dialect, this book can be hard to follow.
One afternoon in 1989, Karen Overhill walks into psychiatrist Richard Baer’s office complaining of vague physical pains and depression. Odder still, she reveals that she’s suffering from a persistent memory problem. Routinely, she “loses” parts of her day, finding herself in places she doesn’t remember going to or being told about conversations she doesn’t remember having. Her problems are so pervasive that she often feels like an impersonator in her own life; she doesn’t recognize the people who call themselves her friends, and she can’t even remember being intimate with her own husband.
Baer recognizes that Karen is on the verge of suicide and, while using various medications to keep her alive, tries to discover the root cause of her strange complaints. It’s the work of months, and then years, to gain Karen’s trust and learn the true extent of the trauma buried in her past. What she eventually reveals is nearly beyond belief, a narrative of a childhood spent grappling with unimaginable horror. How has Karen survived with even a tenuous grasp on sanity?
Then Baer receives an envelope in the mail. It’s marked with Karen’s return address but contains a letter from a little girl who writes that she’s seven years old and lives inside of Karen. Soon Baer receives letters from others claiming to be parts of Karen. Under hypnosis, these alternate Karen personalities reveal themselves in shocking variety and with undeniable traits – both physical and psychological. One “alter” is a young boy filled with frightening aggression; another an adult male who considers himself Karen’s protector; and a third a sassy flirt who says she emerges when Karen has sex. It’s only by compartmentalizing her pain, guilt, and fear in this fashion – by “switching time” with alternate selves as the situation warrants – that Karen has been able to function since childhood.
Realizing that his patient represents an extreme case of multiple personality disorder, Baer faces the daunting task of creating a therapy that will make Karen whole again. Somehow, in fact, he must gain the trust of each of Karen’s seventeen “alters” and convince them of the necessity of their own annihilation.
As powerful as Sibyl or The Three Faces of Eve, Switching Time is the first complete account of such therapy to be told from the perspective of the treating physician, a stunningly devoted healer who worked selflessly for decades so that Karen could one day live as a single human being.
Personal Notes: This book is nonfiction, and picked it up being intrigued about reading about a woman with 17 personalities. The book is very traumatic; I had to put this book down after getting into about 4 discs of listening to it. Up to that point it wasnt as much about her different personalities but that she was talking to her psychologist and being able to recall certain "time lapses" I was unable to finish this book because its very hard listening to the traumatic events this woman went through as a small girl...it goes into detail of the horrors she went through being abused by her parents, grandparents, and her parents friends.